Secretary Michael R. Pompeo With Laura Ingraham of Fox New

QUESTION: Now, one of the targets of that smear,

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, joins me exclusively now. Mr.

Secretary, great to see you. Now, I know you feel that Rice’s remarks

show a lack of restraint that our country can’t afford to have back in

the White House. Explain all that.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Laura, thanks for having me on.

To hear Ambassador Rice talk that way is just crazy. She has a history

of going on Sunday shows and lying. You all will remember that back in

2012 she went on five Sunday shows, and Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean

Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods had all perished under her

administration’s watch in Benghazi, Libya. She went on and made up a

story about a video and a protest when she knew full well that this was a

terror attack. She did so because it was politically convenient to say

that. It’s a – it’s the worst kind of behavior from a national

security leader.

And as for her comments about Russia, it was on the Obama watch,

under the Susan Rice watch, under Vice President Biden’s watch, that

Ukraine had one-fifth of its real estate taken by Vladimir Putin with

virtually no response. It was under her watch that Syria was handed

over to the Russians as a result of a red line that Obama had drawn in

the sand but then refused to enforce. And you’ll recall too, when it

comes to having American soldiers taken care of, what she suggests this

administration didn’t do but does always, it was her administration that

was underwriting the Iranian regime while it was killing American

soldiers in the Middle East. That was an administration that didn’t

care about our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and certainly

didn’t act in a way that was securing the American national interest.

QUESTION: So now, Mr. Secretary, we don’t have to

play the sound bite, but John Bolton essentially in his never-ending

media tour for his book, he said it’s inconceivable that the President

wouldn’t have been briefed on this report about Russia. Your response

to his continued push against the administration on these matters of

national security?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, I don’t want to go back and

forth with John Bolton, other than to say much of what he had in his

book and a number of the things he has said in the aftermath of that

haven’t proven to be true. He was there. He saw that this

administration worked hard to make sure the President had all the

information he needed to make good, sound national security decisions.

And with respect to this particular issue in Afghanistan, I can

assure every one of your viewers that this administration acted in a way

to protect every American who was serving in Afghanistan. We have

fought the Taliban harder than the previous administration ever dreamed

about fighting them, and now President Trump is going to protect our

soldiers by working to get a peace and reconciliation deal that allows

them to come home.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, your thoughts on these

former Bush staffers – this is kind of what they did when Trump was

running in 2016 – but all these former Bush staffers coming out and

saying we’re going to support Joe Biden. What about that? And what

does that reveal about their alliances, the alliances they’ll make in

order to defeat Donald Trump?

SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s sad. This is an

administration that has executed its national security function in a way

that every American can be proud of, whether it was striking Qasem

Soleimani or the remarkable work we did to take down the entire

caliphate in Syria, terrorism, the work we’ve done to put pressure on

Iran. To watch these former officials now suggest that somehow former

Vice President Biden is going to be the right outcome to protect

Americans is just silly.

QUESTION: What will their China policy look like?

From what you know now, with what Biden believes that the real threat to

the United States and the culture wars that are – what can we expect as

Americans as a policy toward China if that likelihood would come to

pass?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Laura, I think we know because we

have eight years of history with President Obama and Vice President

Biden’s China policy. They did nothing, whether it was on the important

issues we’re facing today on human rights, whether that’s in Tibet or

Hong Kong or in the western part where Uyghurs are being forced to

conduct abortions and forced sterilizations. They did nothing, whether

it was in Taiwan, where they refused to do the right thing, or even

protecting Americans from predatory economic activity, costing Americans

thousands and hundreds of thousands of jobs here in the United States.

We know what the Obama-Biden administration did with respect to

China. It kowtowed, it appeased, it turned the other cheek, and it left

America in a weaker position as a direct result of that failure to

lead.

QUESTION: Now, speaking of which, I know you’ve

probably seen this, but China’s eradicating of freedom in Hong Kong, you

warned of this for years. And The Wall Street Journal reports

that Chinese law now requires Hong Kong authorities to strengthen

regulation of the media and the internet, and empowers Beijing to deploy

state security agencies to establish a bureau overseeing national

security in Hong Kong. And now they’re not ruling out, Mr. Secretary –

China is not – blocking Hong Kong’s citizens from leaving for the UK,

because the UK says, “You want to come back and live here? Come here.”

So what’s our response going to be? Would we welcome the Hong

Kongers into the United States if China continues along this path, which

they most certainly will?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, Laura, it’s almost certain

they’re going to continue on this path. To your point, a few weeks back

now, President Trump made clear that Hong Kong was no longer

autonomous. I certified the same. And we can see this is going to end

up just being another communist-run city. It’s unfortunate. Hong Kong

was such a special place, where there were all of the freedoms that the

people of Hong Kong were promised by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s

much like the promise they made to tell us the truth about where the

coronavirus came from. We know it started in Wuhan. We know it came

from China. And yet they covered it up for an awfully long time.

It’s these same kinds of broken promises that will lead the United

States to take the right response with respect to Hong Kong’s new

national security law. We’ve already begun the process of revoking

visas for people who made these decisions, and there will be a series of

actions that the administration will take. We’d love to preserve the

freedom in Hong Kong; but if we can’t, we’re going to hold the Chinese

Communist Party accountable.

QUESTION: And finally, Mr. Secretary, the huge

Chinese app TikTok has about 30 million users in the United States, but

it’s been banned now by India, and Australia is considering the same

action, saying that TikTok was full of mass surveillance and propaganda

and also that the app had the ability to feed information straight to

Beijing.

So a kind of obvious question: If all that’s the case, shouldn’t we

be considering right now, tonight, a ban on Chinese social media apps,

especially TikTok?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Laura, your viewers should know

we’re taking this very seriously. We’re certainly looking at it. We’ve

worked on this very issue for a long time, whether it was the problems

of having Huawei technology in your infrastructure. We’ve gone all over

the world and we’re making real progress getting that out. We declared

ZTE a danger to American national security. We’ve done all of these

things.

With respect to Chinese apps on people’s cell phones, I can assure

you the United States will get this one right too, Laura. I don’t want

to get out in front of the President, but it’s something we’re looking

at.

QUESTION: Would you recommend that people download that app on their phones tonight, tomorrow, anytime currently?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, it’s great to see you as always tonight. Thanks so much.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you, Laura.