Kelly, remarkably, said that Pompeo asked her after the interview, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” and asked her to find the country on a blank map, apparently suggesting she didn’t even know. She said she did, and Pompeo concluded the scene by saying, “People will hear about this.”

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In Saturday morning’s statement, Pompeo claimed Kelly had told him they were off the record at the time, which NPR denies.

“It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency,” Pompeo said. “This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration. It is no wonder that the American people distrust many in the media when they so consistently demonstrate their agenda and their absence of integrity.”

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The most remarkable portion of Pompeo’s statement, though, came at the end.

“It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine," Pompeo said in it.

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The implication is unmistakable: Kelly couldn’t correctly identify the location of Ukraine on the map, and she instead pointed to Bangladesh.

Here’s why there is absolutely no way that happened.

First, Bangladesh is more than 3,000 miles away from Ukraine. It is east of India. Ukraine is in Eastern Europe; Bangladesh is in South Asia. Ukraine is in a border war with Russia; Bangladesh does not border Russia and isn’t even close to it. Ukraine is a large country; Bangladesh is comparatively small. It’s difficult to believe basically any journalist who was asked to locate Ukraine would point to Bangladesh, no matter how inexperienced.

If we are to believe @SecPompeo over @NPRKelly, then...we're supposed to believe she pointed here instead of there on the map. https://t.co/op4gwK30Fw pic.twitter.com/d67gTpBCgp — IanShapira (@ianshapira) January 25, 2020

And second, even if there was one, there is no way it would be Kelly. Kelly isn’t just a host of “All Things Considered,” she is also a former national security reporter who has traveled overseas extensively in her reporting. She also literally has a master’s degree — in European studies — from Cambridge University in England, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

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Pompeo could have mentioned a country that is actually near Ukraine, and it still wouldn’t have been believable given Kelly’s background. Mentioning a country in South Asia is patently ridiculous. Indeed, the mere fact that he challenged Kelly on the subject in the first place suggests he doesn’t really know who he was dealing with.

What’s also notable about Pompeo’s statement is that he doesn’t directly accuse Kelly of mistaking the two, even though that’s clearly what he wants the reader to take away from it. The State Department’s rebuttal to this will likely be something along the lines of, “We didn’t actually say that she pointed to Bangladesh.” But the calculation in Pompeo’s statement is evident.

Pompeo has survived for the entirety of the Trump administration because of his ability to project the Trump message and avoid alienating the president. This has often demanded that he make strained and factually untrue arguments and defend things that he’s clearly uncomfortable defending. One of those things is the Trump team’s targeting of former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a State Department employee whom Pompeo has suggested he had defended without ever doing so publicly. That was the subject that set Pompeo off on Friday.

The problem with Pompeo’s willingness to play ball with Trump, though, is the potential loss of credibility. This is a prime example of that risk.