How much credit should Mike Pompeo get for this easy dunk on Ilhan Omar? Just enough to keep incentives up for the next one. After the Minnesota Democrat laid blame on the US for Venezuela’s collapse by “bullying” a regime that had just sent armored vehicles to run over civilians, the Secretary of State appeared on Fox’s Ingraham Angle to muse over Omar’s “unbelievable ignorance.” Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are responsible for the collapse of the country with their own socialist policies, and called Omar’s attempts to blame the US “disgusting”:

“So, the nicest thing I can say is it is unbelievable ignorance. It’s just factually wrong,” Pompeo said on the “Ingraham Angle,” according to Fox News. The top US diplomat blamed Venezuela’s problems on socialism. “The problems in Venezuela have been years in the making. It’s been a socialist regime, first with (Hugo) Chavez now with Maduro. The destruction of a wealthy nation. A nation with more oil reserves than any other country in the world,” he said. In blasting Omar, Pompeo brought up that she sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “For a member of Congress who, frankly, one who sits on an important national committee, making a statement blaming America first in this way, it’s not only ignorant, it’s disgusting,” he said.

Frankly, yes — that’s what makes it an easy dunk. We expect that kind of response from a Secretary of State that’s busy trying to keep the Russians, Chinese, and Cubans (and maybe the Iranians) from extending Maduro’s disastrous reign, even if the legitimate alternative is only moderately less leftist than the current regime. Omar once called Guaidó “far right,” which is about as unbelievably ignorant as it gets. The question for the US isn’t about imposing far-right regimes; it’s about whether Guaidó represents enough change to make any effort on his behalf worthwhile.

That’s a question Pompeo addresses succinctly, if not comprehensively, with Laura Ingraham in this interview. The most entertaining part of the interview comes later, when Ingraham plays comments from Hillary Clinton sardonically asking China to help Democrats by finding Donald Trump’s tax returns and holding a “great power contest” between Russia, China, and the US. Pompeo laughed aloud and said, “There is a great power contest taking place, I think that’s true. I only wish that when she was Secretary of State she would have taken it on, instead of allowing it to get where it is today.”

Now that’s a worthy slam dunk.