Pompeo courts Trump's culture warriors in Jerusalem speech
Josh Ruebner Power Suits 26 August 2020
Man speaks to camera with evening cityscape behind him
With occupied East Jerusalem as his backdrop, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
made a pitch to President Trump's Evangelical base. (C-SPAN)
In likely violation of US law and State Department regulations, Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on Tuesday laced with anti-Chinese
racism to the Republican National Convention (RNC).
He spoke from outside the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem while on a
taxpayer-funded, official diplomatic visit.
Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, chair of the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, launched
an investigation into Pompeo's speech.
Calling it "highly unusual, and likely unprecedented, for a sitting
secretary of state to speak at a partisan convention," Castro demanded
Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun to turn over detailed written
responses to questions and internal documents concerning Pompeo's speech to
ascertain whether legislative action is needed to hold Pompeo accountable.
At issue are seemingly clear provisions in US law and State Department
procedures and legal memos that prohibit US government employees in general,
and State Department officials in particular, from engaging in partisan
activities, especially while representing the United States abroad.
While Castro's investigation of Pompeo does not directly address the policy
implications of his speech to the RNC, it is noteworthy that he is one of
three candidates seeking to replace New York Representative Eliot Engel as
chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee next year.
Engel was solidly defeated by political newcomer Jamaal Bowman in the
Democratic primary this year.
Engel - one of the Democratic Party's most stalwart advocates for Israel -
lost despite the infusion of millions of dollars of pro-Israel money in
support of his campaign to a candidate who did not shy away from speaking
out in favor of Palestinian rights.
If selected as the next committee chair, Castro has vowed to center
Palestinian voices in committee hearings dealing with Israeli-Palestinian
policy issues.
"Over the years, there have been too many voices excluded; I think too often
Palestinian voices have been excluded," Castro told The Washington Post last
month,
"If the United States is going to be an arbiter of peace, it has to be
willing to hear from the different sides, and in my estimation we've not
always done that," he added.
Castro's investigation of Pompeo's speech throws an interesting
Israel-related wrinkle into his candidacy to chair the House Foreign Affairs
Committee.
"City of God"
As importantly, Pompeo's speech also demonstrates the degree to which the
Republican Party is seeking to champion Israel and politicize what
traditionally had been a bipartisan consensus of nearly lock-step support
for it.
The section of Pompeo's speech devoted to the Trump administration's
policies on Israel was surprisingly brief.
"The president exited the US from the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran and
squeezed the Ayatollah, Hizballah and Hamas," Pompeo bragged.
He also touted Trump's move of the US embassy "to this very city of God,
Jerusalem, the rightful capital of the Jewish homeland."
And he mentioned how the US brokered what he termed the "historic peace deal
between Israel and the United Arab Emirates."
"This is a deal that our grandchildren will read about in their history
books," Pompeo asserted.
Leaving aside Pompeo's specious and grandiose claim of brokering "a historic
peace deal" between Israel and the UAE - which was merely a normalization of
diplomatic relations between two countries never at war - his speech is most
noteworthy for the transparent and cynical attempt to shore up Christian
Evangelical support for Trump.
"We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That's for the Evangelicals,"
Trump admitted at a campaign rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, last week.
"You know, it's amazing with that: The Evangelicals are more excited about
that than Jewish people. That's right, it's incredible."
Trump's anti-Semitism
Trump's incredulity that Evangelicals would be "more excited" than Jewish
people about his moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem continues his pattern
of anti-Semitic dog-whistling.
Last August, Trump opined: "'I think any Jewish people that vote for a
Democrat - I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great
disloyalty."
Trump's claim that Jewish people should either be loyal to him for
supporting Israel or be loyal to Israel first and foremost is a classic
anti-Semitic trope.
Surely the poll-obsessed president did not miss the fact that only 16
percent of Jewish Americans supported the embassy move, whereas a majority
of Evangelicals did.
Clearly, Pompeo's invocation of Jerusalem as the "city of God" and the
"rightful capital of the Jewish homeland" is designed to consolidate
Evangelical votes for Trump in advance of the election.
It is of a piece with the Republican Party's strategy of playing to its
shrinking, overwhelmingly white nationalist base of grievance-obsessed
culture warriors.