President Trump on Monday said he fired the State Department inspector general at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but appeared unfamiliar with any of the investigations the inspector general was said to be conducting into Pompeo at the time of his ouster.
A reporter told Trump of the two investigations Inspector General Steve Linick was carrying out at the time of his ouster after Trump said he knew nothing about it. When the president learned that one involved concerns that Pompeo had a State Department staffer performing personal errands, such as walking his dog, Trump didn’t see the issue.
“Here’s a man supposed to be negotiating war and peace with major, major countries with weaponry like the world has never seen before, and the Democrats and the fake news media they’re interested in a man who’s walking their dog,” Trump said. “And maybe he’s busy. And maybe he’s negotiating with Kim Jong Un, OK, about nuclear weapons. So that he’d say please could you walk my dog?”
The president added that he’d rather have Pompeo “on the phone with some world leader than have him wash dishes because maybe his wife isn’t there, or his kids aren’t there.”
“I don’t know,” Trump continued. “I think this country has a long way to go. The priorities are really screwed up when I read this.”
When the reporter explained another investigation was looking into the administration’s use of an emergency declaration to sell billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia and other allies, Trump saw no issue and called Pompeo a “high quality guy.”
“If somebody wants to give us billions of dollars to buy an airplane or a number of airplanes and missiles and all of the other things that we make better than anybody in the world, we should take the money, we should make the deals fast,” Trump said.
Trump late Friday announced his intention to dismiss Linick, the State Department inspector general since 2013. The decision drew swift rebuke from Democrats who accused the administration of political retaliation, saying the inspector general was investigating Pompeo’s possible misuse of taxpayer funds.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), along with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have launched an investigation into the circumstances of Linick’s dismissal.