After refusing to acknowledge President Donald Trump’s loss in last week’s election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is leaving Friday on a trip to Europe and the Middle East, where leaders have all congratulated former vice president Joe Biden for his victory. But those comments and subsequent statements in interviews with conservative media did not acknowledge that it’s Biden who will become president then. Pompeo’s weeklong tour takes him to France, Turkey, Georgia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Pompeo has had a notoriously frosty relationship with the press and it was also unclear if he planned to take questions from reporters. Yet, at his news conference Tuesday, Pompeo roundly dismissed a question about whether Trump’s unfounded protests have created problems for U.S. credibility.

Source: The Standard November 13, 2020 06:00 UTC