Where in Mike Pompeo’s Bible does it tell him to sneer at murder victims? | Opinion

I keep thinking of the Bible on Mike Pompeo’s desk.

If you ever read a profile of Pompeo during his years as CIA director and secretary of state during the Trump administration, you probably saw references to that Bible. He mentioned it frequently to journalists and other audiences, a symbol of the deep piety he brought to his very important work on behalf of the country.

The message: Mike Pompeo is defined by his Christian faith.

“In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth,” the Republican who served as Kansas congressman before he went to work for Donald Trump, told a Cairo audience in 2019. “It informs everything I do,” he told a New York Times reporter that same year.

Now Pompeo is gearing up for a likely presidential run. He has just released a book, “Never Give an Inch,” that serves as both a biography and campaign advertising. And it raises a question:

What does Mike Pompeo’s Bible say about sneering at murder victims?

I ask because his new book is dripping with disdain for Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post contributor who was assassinated and literally butchered by Saudi agents in 2018. Pompeo and Trump came under fierce criticism in the months after the murder for not more forcefully condemning Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman — the man who most likely ordered the heinous crime.

But Pompeo has no regrets.

He offers a “he had it coming” assessment of the murder, and describes Khashoggi as “cozy” with the Muslim Brotherhood and sorrowful about Osama bin Laden’s death. (Khashoggi’s widow has refuted both allegations.)

“The media made Khashoggi out to be a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodard who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family through his opinion articles in The Washington Post,” Pompeo writes. “In truth, Khashoggi was an activist who had supported the losing team in a recent fight for the throne in Saudi Arabia, and he was unhappy with having been exiled.”

The former secretary of state can’t be bothered to condemn Salman. His real ire is directed — naturally — at the “faux outrage” of American journalists.

“Just as the media spent years trying to drive a wedge between me and President Trump, they spent the ensuing weeks trying to fracture America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia,” he writes. Why? Because the “progressive left” hates Salman, even though “he is leading the greatest cultural reform in the kingdom’s history.”

Get that? Murdering tyrants are great men. Reporters and progressives who point out the blood on those tyrants’ hands? They’re the real villains.

Again: Where do we find this kind of attitude in Pompeo’s Bible?

“Thou shalt not kill?” Well, sure, unless the killer is a visionary leading a nation’s “greatest cultural reform.”

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”? Unless the deaths of their loved ones make good campaign fodder, apparently.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy”? Not applicable, clearly.

Or how about this? “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

All you can do is shake your head.

The backlash has been fierce. Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr, said Pompeo “should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband.” Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan called Pompeo’s remarks “shameful.” He was right.

And Pompeo doubled down.

“Americans are safer because we didn’t label Saudi Arabia a pariah state,” he tweeted Tuesday, adding: “I never let the media bully me.”

The 2024 presidential campaign is coming. Pompeo is probably running, and he will probably brandish his faith at every stop along the campaign trail. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.

But voters will have to ask themselves which represents the real Mike Pompeo: The Bible on his desk? Or his sympathy for the devil?