The meeting between Mike Pompeo (pictured) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un marks the highest-level known talks between the U.S. and North Korean governments since 2000. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo White House hypes North Korea trip to boost Pompeo’s image The CIA director is facing a narrow Senate confirmation vote to be Trump's next top diplomat, and supporters say the high-stakes trip proves he can handle the job.

The White House on Wednesday cast CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s meeting with North Korea’s leader as evidence of his qualification to be President Donald Trump’s top diplomat, putting a political spin on his act of high-stakes nuclear diplomacy.

Word of the trip, arranged to discuss an upcoming summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un, leaked on Tuesday in the midst of the White House’s effort to ensure Pompeo’s confirmation as secretary of state. Trump has tapped Pompeo to replace the ousted Rex Tillerson, but his fate in a narrowly divided Senate is uncertain.


The revelation was timed to shore up Pompeo’s image as a diplomat capable of executing sensitive negotiations on the president’s behalf, according to a senior administration official—and to undermine Democratic efforts to portray him as a warmonger unsuited to lead the country’s diplomatic corps.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a leading GOP foreign policy voice, echoed that theme in a Wednesday conference call with reporters conducted by the White House. Pompeo’s meeting with Kim is “the best evidence imaginable that he is committed to diplomacy,” Cotton said, suggesting that blocking Pompeo’s nomination could derail talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s swiftly advancing nuclear program.

“This is a good example of how critical it is on the merits to confirm Mike Pompeo. He’s already invested deeply in the upcoming summit between the president and Kim Jong Un,” Cotton said. “It would send a very bad sign and it would, I believe, set back the preparations and perhaps even the results of that upcoming summit for the Senate Democrats to oppose as a bloc Mike Pompeo’s nomination to be secretary of state.”

Morning Defense newsletter Sign up for Morning Defense, a daily briefing on Washington's national security apparatus. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trump confirmed on Twitter Wednesday that Pompeo had traveled to Pyongyang to help prepare for a summit with Kim that Trump agreed to last month. The White House says that meeting will likely occur in late May or early June at an undetermined location in Europe or Asia. The talks will focus on Trump’s demand that Kim dismantle his nuclear weapons arsenal and halt his long-range missile program and offer Trump the prospect of a historic diplomatic achievement.

Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort Wednesday, Trump predicted Pompeo “will go down as truly a great secretary of state,” and said that his CIA director “got along with [Kim] really well, really great.”

If so, that would be a remarkable change of attitude for Pompeo, who has publicly expressed his hope that Kim—a brutal dictator who has had ordered the execution of family members—be removed from power.

“Nothing could better underscore the importance of getting America’s top diplomat in place for such a time as this,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted Wednesday morning. “Dems have an opportunity to put politics aside, acknowledge our national security is too important, and confirm Mike Pompeo. Statesmanship.”

But the news of Pompeo’s unusual visit with the reclusive Kim was not enough to prevent several leading Democrats from declaring their opposition to his nomination Wednesday.

In remarks at a Washington think tank Wednesday, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, said he would oppose Pompeo’s nomination — and that Pompeo was wrong not to disclose the trip to him.

”Even in my private conversations with him, he didn’t tell me about his visit to North Korea,” Menendez said. “Now I don’t expect diplomacy to be negotiated out in the open but I do expect for someone who is the nominee to be Secretary of State, when he speaks with committee leadership and is asked specific questions about North Korea, to share some insights about such a visit.”

The meeting between Pompeo and Kim marks the highest-level known talks between the U.S. and North Korean governments since 2000, when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with Kim Jong Il, the now-deceased father of the current North Korean leader.

A summit between Kim and Trump would represent a significant shift in relations between the U.S. and North Korea, two nations that have been adversaries since the beginning of the Korean War.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee members grilled Pompeo last week and will be the first to vote on his nomination. Republicans hold an 11-10 majority on the committee, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has said he will vote against Pompeo, raising the prospect that his nomination will be sent to the full Senate with an unfavorable recommendation by the committee.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Trump suggested that Paul could have a change of heart.

“Rand Paul is a very special guy ... He’s never let me down, and I don’t think he’ll let me down again,” Trump said.

With Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) away from Washington as he undergoes cancer treatment and Paul currently an expected no vote, Pompeo needs at least one Democratic supporter to be confirmed. Fifteen Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), voted to confirm him as CIA director, although it remains unclear whether any will support him for secretary of state.

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also declared his opposition to Pompeo Wednesday. “I do not believe Mr. Pompeo will be an independent voice in advising the president, nor an advocate for leading our allies and friends around the world in support of the international norms and values that protect America and enhance our prosperity and security,” Cardin said in a statement.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, also said Wednesday that he will vote against Pompeo. “He just has a track record of statements that are sort of antidiplomatic,” Kaine told MSNBC.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday he expects a floor vote on Pompeo as soon as next week and that word of the Kim meeting “likely doesn’t have much effect” on his chances of winning Democratic votes.

Given that the U.S. has long “kept back channels to North Korea through intelligence” officials, Corker told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor-sponsored breakfast, “I think it’s perfectly natural then that he would be the person that would have the first meeting and sit-down.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Cotton and Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway noted that more than a dozen Democrats supported Pompeo’s confirmation as CIA director and suggested that he had earned more, not less, support from the party. Cotton noted that several Senate Democrats face tough 2018 reelection fights in states carried easily by Trump, including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.). Cotton also said he believes Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) will back Pompeo’s nomination.

Conway also noted positive words for Pompeo from former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Albright. Clinton recently said she saw a “glimmer of hope” in Pompeo’s reliance on career officials at the CIA, and Albright told NPR that she appreciated his efforts to show he values diplomacy during his confirmation hearing.

Cotton was highly critical of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, telling reporters that it is not representative of the Senate as a whole. He said Paul “has unusual foreign policy views that are not representative of the Republican Senate caucus” and called the Foreign Relations Committee Democrats “two-bit Tallyrands,” a reference to the 19th century French foreign minister famous for his wily cynicism.

Trump stunned the international community last month when he announced he had accepted an invitation to meet with Kim, breaking with the precedent set by his predecessors from both parties, who largely worked to isolate North Korea as punishment for its nuclear program and human rights abuses.

Trump warned on Tuesday that the summit is not guaranteed to take place, saying “it’s possible things won’t go well and we won’t have the meetings, and we’ll just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken.”

Trump has repeatedly said he might attack North Korea if it appears close to mounting a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S., a capability some officials say Pyongyang could achieve within less than a year, at one point threatening it with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Pyongyang, for its part, has conducted regular ballistic missile tests during Trump’s first year, and last September detonated its sixth test of a nuclear device, its most powerful to date.

Elana Schor, Eliana Johnson, and Michael Crowley contributed to this report.