Given previous republican actions during presidential campaigns, even when the candidate and his allies were not as evil as Trump, I have to wonder if this is an action trying to encourage a terrorist attack on us right before the election, to boost Trump's votes and/or give him an excuse to postpone the election, and/or impose martial law.
Aug. 25, 2020, 5:00 AM EDT / Updated Aug. 25, 2020, 3:33 PM EDT
By Josh Lederman, Carol E. Lee and Andrea Mitchell
Diplomats who are barred by law from mixing work and politics say they're appalled by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's decision to address the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, breaking with long-standing traditions aimed at isolating American's foreign policy from partisan battles at home.
It would be problematic enough, current and former U.S. diplomats said, if Pompeo were simply showing up at the convention to speak. But Pompeo's decision to use a stop in Jerusalem during an official overseas trip as the site for his recorded speech to fellow Republicans raises even more troubling questions about the message it sends to other countries and whether U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, they said.
"It's all just shredding the Hatch Act," a current U.S. diplomat said, referring to the federal law that prohibits government employees from political activity on the job or in their official capacities.
The official and others still working for the government spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Their comments were echoed by former U.S. diplomats who said the dismay within the diplomatic community was palpable.
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Pompeo's speech in service of President Donald Trump's re-election appears to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of three legal memos issued by the State Department's legal adviser.
One of the legal memos, intended to guide political appointees, says explicitly in bold letters that "Senate-confirmed Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention."
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A State Department official with knowledge of the secretary's usual travel arrangements said that even a brief detour during Pompeo's visit to Israel to tape a convention speech would involve motorcade drivers, locally employed workers from the U.S. Embassy and traveling staff members from Washington who accompany the secretary at all times, as well as his significant security apparatus, all of which is paid for by taxpayers.
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No other secretaries of state in recent history have even attended their party conventions. Although a few secretaries did attend in the 1970s and the 1980s, historians could point to no example of a secretary actually delivering a speech at a nominating convention.
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