The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday heard testimony from and asked questions of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding President Trump‘s 2020 budget request and, naturally, focused on several hot topics as regard international relations and diplomacy.
In one testy exchange of note, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) was pressing Pompeo on how budget cuts affect diplomatic efforts, and in particular about assurances from Kim Jong Un on North Korea’s nuclear program. Pompeo, who was a feisty witness throughout the hearing, snapped at Cardin’s question by bring up the much-maligned-by-the-Trump-administration Iran Deal, entered into during President Obama’s tenure.
Cardin began his voir dire about North Korea with a somewhat vague question. “We’ve had two summits between the leader of North Korea and the United States,” he said. “Have we reached an agreement of what the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula would like?”
“I can’t answer that question yes or no,” said Pompeo after a moment. “We have had extensive conversations with the North Korean about what the full final denuclearization as verified by the international community would ultimately look like.”
“It would look like the fully denuclearized North Korea,” said Pompeo with a sort of sarcastic laugh. “That’s what it would look like.”
Cardin asked if Kim Jong Un has agreed on that, and Pompeo said Kim has to him personally more than a dozen times, that he has to President Trump, and put it in writing as well. Cardin and Pompeo both said in their own words that there is more work to do.
Cardin then said that having both a commitment to denuclearize and a “roadmap” to accomplish is “really the first step” and called it the “preliminaries.”
“We’ve now had two summit meetings and we don’t yet have that in place,” he said, prompting Pompeo.
“Senator, I wish we’d have gotten that from the Iranians,” Pompeo replied curtly, and stopped.
There was then an awkward silence for four and a half seconds while Pompeo and Cardin stared at each other.
“I, I do believe we have–” Cardin finally began, and Pompeo interrupted.
“It was a total fraud, Senator, and everyone knew it,” said Pompeo. “The declaration the Iranians made was completely fraught with errors, both, of– intentional and otherwise.”
“We’re working, we understand that you need a baseline to begin to denuclearize North Korea and we’re determined to get there,” he hastily added.
“I appreciate your pivot to my question–” said Cardin.
“Well I answered your question, we’re, we’ve still got work to do, Senator,” said Pompeo.
“I understand that. And I’m trying to focus on North Korea,” said Cardin. “In Iran, there are boots on the–we have people, not us, the international community have inspectors that are looking at sites.’
“Do we have international inspectors in North Korea?” he asked pointedly.
“We do not,” Pompeo replied.
That was the end of the exchange, and the chair moved on to the next Senator.
Watch the clip above, courtesy of C-SPAN.
—