Indeed, between the PDB briefings, weekly lunches, and extended overseas summits, no member of the cabinet appears to spend as much time with Trump as Pompeo.
The president clearly appreciates Pompeo’s lack of drama and consistent public defense of the administration. “I argue with everyone,” Trump told New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi during a rollicking Oval Office interview a year ago, “except Pompeo.” As Trump told her, “I don’t think I’ve had an argument with Pompeo!”
Asked how he’s stayed in such good graces with the White House in an administration that burns through officials at Daytona 500-like speeds, Pompeo told me that he just understands his specific role. “I’ve been a leader and a follower all my life,” he says. “When you have a tank platoon, you have a company commander. When you run a business in Wichita, Kansas, you have a board of directors. When you work at a church, you work for the senior people of the church and the Lord.”
“It’s not lost on anybody who meets with him—he has a bold and courageous spirit and he’s a Christian conservative, in that order, and yet he’s got a smile on his face.”
Usually, Pompeo’s department seems to go out of its way to walk on eggshells around Trump; it yanked a press freedom award from a Finnish journalist who criticized the president on Twitter. Pompeo himself carefully cultivates his own press image and has been reluctant to engage with reporters; the State Department has drastically curtailed what had been daily press briefings in prior administrations. Whereas Clinton made social media and what she called 21st-century diploma ..
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