LIVESTREAM - Mike Pompeo Speech at Hillsdale College

welcome to hillsdale college my name is tim caspar i work at hillsdale college uh where i have for the past i guess 21 plus years now during that time i've been fortunate to have a ringside seat as the college has been growing and improving and extending its nationwide reach uh and all the while we're guided by the same uh mission that college has always been guided by since its founding in 1844 by the way for those of you who are as as bad at math as i am that means the college is 177 years old this year here on campus the quality of the students and faculty is better than ever i'm sure i wouldn't make the cut off campus more americans learn from hillsdale college than ever before well we go about our work every day here on campus under the direction and leadership of our next speaker he's been the pilot of the hillsdale college ship since 2000 he received his ba from arkansas state university and his m.a and ph.d in government from the claremont graduate school he also studied at the london school of economics and at worcester college oxford university where he served as director of research for the late sir martin gilbert the official biographer of winston churchill prior to his appointment as president of hillsdale college he served for 15 years as president of the claremont institute for the study of statesmanship and political philosophy in 2012 due to martin gilbert's declining health he assumed responsibility for editing the final six document volumes of the churchill biography and he saw the project through to completion in 2019. the biography all 31 volumes is available from hillsdale college press in 2015 he received the bradley prize from the bradley foundation and he's the author of a growing number of books including most recently churchill's trial winston churchill and the salvation of free government the part of his job that i think he enjoys the most is teaching he teaches a variety of courses on subjects including aristotle the constitution c.s lewis and totalitarian novels would you please welcome an author and editor and professor of history and politics he's the 12th president of hillsdale college larry pjarne [Applause] i just found out we have a green room back there nobody tells me anything welcome to the campus uh i'm sorry to say that the current secretary of state is not able to make it [Applause] so we have this other guy i know how many people saw my granddaughter in the dining room right and i know you really came for that but there is this other guy um i'm just going to give you a short report on the state of the college i can summarize it in this my worthless son-in-law who is however the father of that beautiful granddaughter he told me coming out of homecoming we won our homecoming game and homecoming here is more fun than a barrel of monkeys and uh he's walking behind and there's these two undergraduates he doesn't know them and one says the other is homecoming this much fun at a normal college [Laughter] it tells you what we think about ourselves our speaker is the immediate past secretary of state he was a congressman from kansas he was a cavalry officer that means a tank commander he went to west point he graduated top of his class there are famous generals especially george pickett of the pickett's charge at the battle of gettysburg who graduated last in their class i always thought that must be more honorable than first in his class but our the secretary graduated first he went to harvard law school where he was on the law review he uh he graduated first in his class it's funny you know he doesn't seem that smart yeah he does yeah he does he is an extremely important man uh because in these trials that we're going through somebody who's serious and a fighter and has experience it turns out there's a lot of things going wrong in america and they emanate from washington d.c our speaker not has been in the middle of all that he was in the congress when donald trump was elected he was appointed head of the cia and he gives you can ask him about it in the q a he he gives good reports of the spirit of most everybody there and then he went to a different kind of place the united states department of state and that's a mess but experience with that because it's the archetype of the mess right they don't work for us anymore back there and that's shouldn't even be a controversial thing to say because the form of government does not tie them to our will anymore and the form that we have today was deliberately chosen in things that are copious in moves that are copiously recorded because it had that feature that experts would rule in the name of their expertise this man has been in the belly of that beast now sometime long about 2014 i met him because tom cotton senator cotton also from arkansas and therefore my cousin i heard the secretary say tonight that he's from kansas and he's got 200 cousins in in kansas they're not sufficiently inbred [Laughter] tom cotton's wife anna whom my wife and i introduced tom cotton to turns out she's it's the weirdest thing in the world she's a green bay pankers fan and the packers were yeah they won the other night didn't they uh and the packers were playing in the playoffs and tom cotton called me up and invited him himself over to a little house we own in washington dc we don't own a house in hillside michigan my wife says we live above the shop so it's a nice shop but it's not ours um i'm coming over and i'm to watch the packers and i'm bringing pompeo and so mike pompeo and his wife susan and anna cotton and i and my wife penny we watched all afternoon a playoff game that fortunately the packers won or it would have been miserable and i saw what kind of fella he is he commanded abram's tanks on the edge of the soviet union before it collapsed what what that does to a person in my experience is it turns them into sort of like jocks the humor is assertive and good too and makes them servants because you know they have to foreshadow their death any day what if the soviets come across the border he was close to that border for a long time i told him today i i do i'm very fond of him i think he's a pretentious man for the future of the country whatever the surface service he does will be but but i told him today my favorite greek word it turns out i just love the way it sounds is spudios doesn't that sound great don't you like that word and what it means is a person of serious moral worth and when a person like that gets experience in the highest places they're in a position to do better next time and they did well the first time and only that preparation combined with continuity can rescue this situation and so i introduce to you an important man mike pompeo [Applause] thank you lovely introduction [Applause] i was saying to dr aaron that much applause before you speak is dangerous uh doctor thank you for that uh kind uh introduction he told me that drink uh greek word had no idea what it meant so he was right i'm not as smart as you might think so i have a number of things i want to share with things that are on my heart tonight things we can have a conversation about when i take some questions at the end i'm i'm privileged i'm now out of the administration so you'll get a chance to get mike pompeo unplugged uh my wife would always joke in the administration said mike you know you go on on the sunday shows and you know you don't smile and say honey we're talking about really dangerous tough things now i can smile it's been a long eight months and i'll talk about some of those things not because it's been impactful to me personally but because of so much what's happened in this these eight months has impacted every one of you and every american i i was walking over here tonight we walked from the president's office over to his home and then over here i know this place a little bit hillsdale i know it's greatness it's importance to america it's a place that imparts character it's a place that imparts faith and freedom it sparks memories for me of another great institution the place that i went to school the united states military academy at west point it feels in some ways as they serve these important missions together alongside of each other that one was founded in 1802 this one in 1844 and they have deep roots in american history dr army joking about i was a good student and most of the generals that you know who led america's charges weren't i was deeply mindful of that you know as a cadet there there was just a single standard for excellence from my perspective it was a general the army douglas macarthur i lived in macarthur barracks for a short time he said quote that history fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline leading to ultimate national disaster for he believed only that a spiritual awakening could overcome the danger you all know this history leaves its marks dr aaron was talking a little bit earlier about history the crisis of the third century brought the roman empire to the edge of collapse due to military over-extension immigration without a civilization plague inflation political disunity and insurgents think about those but our country's principles remain intact for their instigation reaches past this world and indeed comes from another but for the tree of liberty for the tree of liberty to have roots america must be defended against enemies both foreign and domestic i spent the last four years working diligently to try and do that and the question for us tonight is will it will we we're in our third century now and it must not signify our dissent the world is depending on it to prevail we must inscribe faith in a higher power allegiance to america's founding documents and a commitment to american exceptionalism i'll talk about how we tried to do that i i want to speak tonight about four issues that we confronted and they touched deeply on our present moment as well first the erosion of our foundational principles you all you are teaching this to the next generation here how to make sure that that doesn't continue to erode second the left's progressive domination of our central institutions third i want to talk about the threat that is imposed upon us all today from the chinese communist party it is not disconnected from the first two and then finally i want to talk about the things that we can all do each of us can do to avert this disaster look you all know this the families will always be the irreplaceable unit of humankind period full stop the expression of faith anchors families through prayer and love america's churches synagogues mosques and temples provide moral and physical sustenance to families in need and character that which you are trying to instill in students here at hillsdale is the essence of the united states of america the proclamation by men and women of faith that god's relationship was with the individual and not the collective is at the center of this it is absolutely essential i saw this as secretary of state we we have to marshal our authority to reach past our broken media and corrupt elites to return america to its moral core reminds me i was my son who's a little bit older called me and and said he'd seen the washington post had written a piece and it said america's worst secretary of state ever that had followed on peace in the new york times just the day before said the same thing these were not disconnected they were they were they were aiming for me and so my son knowing i'm pretty tough the first one goes by the second when he says i should call and check in with dad so i always try to take calls from my son and he says dada did you see the post today and i said i i saw it and uh he said he said look dope because i was doing some research and this fellow named elihu washburn and i said yes and he said he was the he was a secretary of state for only 11 days surely you're better than him yeah so we started a club called we're number two our our children our families are what guide us uh in traversing all of the challenges we face today look at the digital landscape what our kids are suffering from it is addictive cyber immersion technology induced isolation like we've not seen in the united states before and it was in isolation which the pandemic was amplified the threat posed by this loneliness the separation from family and the constriction of perspectives has to be addressed algorithms computers i was an engineer by training algorithms computers social media cannot substitute for faith and family we have to stay connected to that tremendous achievements have been made possible through this technology it's great but it can never replace a parent comforting a sick child or a person of faith holding the hand of someone in dire need when i was a student living in massachusetts i had the opportunity to tutor two young kids who were from a pretty tough neighborhood i taught them that arithmetic mattered it mattered not only in the numbers but the discipline that it would be required for them to master the subject that was in front of them but i knew too it would be a gateway for them but i knew this i knew our time together mattered even more neither of these children's had a father that time with an adult was scarce for them and i suspect it was irreplaceable we each all of us here must proclaim the eternal relevance of strong families i spent four years serving as america's secretary of state i get asked what's the biggest challenge facing the united states and the expectations i'll say vladimir putin chairman kim xi jinping all big challenges the single biggest risk to the united states of america is in our schools and in our families howard [Applause] our government should never promote policies that disrupt this ideal but we have lots of programs lots of programs today you all know them that disparage the value of fathers and this this has to end it has to end for the children it has to end for the fathers but it has to end for our country too we must never tolerate that which is a front to the basic system the basis of all humanity look when the current secretary of health and human services testified before the senate he couldn't bring himself to say the word mother i go look at the tape we're in danger of no longer living in a country but an asylum when you hear language like this faith venerates mothers as the bringers of life but he couldn't bring himself to say it under oath i don't know what he called his mom we know these people these are the people that generate american history church and state church and state are something that the left has tried to separate uh in our administration we tried never to let that happen our nation suffers for too much for having taken the concept of separation church and state to mean that we have to tear the two apart but of course the two statements aren't synonymous i'll never forget i was the cia director i climbed off a place a plane in a pretty dark place climbed down the stairs it was three in the morning and a fellow presses into my palm of my hand a small pocket bible i was in a hurry i i hopped into my vehicle and i opened the bible and he said to me said mr director you have been a light in my life i don't tell that story about me but because it gets to the central thesis of refusing to separate one's own personal faith and one's commitment to america and our constitution they're deeply intertwined thomas jefferson wrote that the almighty god hath created the mind free and then later he stated that the establishment caused which forbade the inauguration of a state religion but built a wall of separation between the church of state but he knew better he it was misunderstood it was interpreted by our courts i think intentionally because the wall's purpose was to protect the expression of religion and its infringements from government we in our arrogance have banished religion from our schools and public spaces and in doing so have wrought enormous havoc we've forgotten our founders intent and done great harm to the republic as a result of it john adams had it right his inaugural address he said simply patronize every rational effort to encourage every institution for propagating knowledge virtue and religion among all classes as the only means of preserving our constitution later in that same address he stated that he considered a respect to christianity among the best recommendations for public service and to that i say amen kept me going during my four years as well and i must say i gave a speech it was in cairo egypt the opening line of this speech which my speechwriters tried to take out not once not twice but three times i simply said that i am an evangelical christian standing there in cairo i must say that i hear about those remarks more than any other from leaders of every faith who said we appreciated you saying that it showed candor it showed discipline it showed a true commitment to something beyond one's self and we value that although our faith is different we value that too this gets back to what thomas jefferson was talking about when he came to an understanding of faith and america and the importance of keeping it in our public sphere look it was never an intent nor could it have been at the time of our nation's creation for in that age humanity and its progress were viewed as inseparable from our judeo-christian heritage and our belief in god our government must never be permitted to cloak god's word yet a powerful assemblage of elites disparages it every day you saw them close bars and leave churches open you know i first had the chance to think about this idea of separating church and state when i was traveling from washington while i was still in law school i recall the moment i i was doing a little bit of a history tour with a friend and we were outside the capitol at the eastern pediment of the supreme court just around the corner from the capitol building it's not usually seen because visitors don't come in that way it's at the tail end of capitol hill the pediments freeze depicts history's lawgivers seated centrally moses holds the two famous massive tablets and they're blank in this particular rendition i couldn't figure out exactly why there were no words i thought about it and then i did some reading i came to understand that it was because the ten commandments differ in their wording and in their order from the protestant roman catholic orthodox and jewish faiths therefore if the words of the commandments had been carved into the stone or so the craftsman believed america's temple to justice would show a preference for one faith as amongst the others he knew that wasn't its place and so desiring that the religious wars of europe would not find refuge in america our founders forbade just that preference in the establishment of a state religion but make no mistake about it the wisdom of the eastern impediment continues there's another meaning the essence the essence of this idea of church and state and its separation here in our nation was to make sure that there was no deification of the state it is are not our god we have bigger bigger callings the truth was first enunciated by jesus christ render therefore to caesar that things that which are caesar's and to god the things that are god's note that he did not say that certain human activities were outside of god's authority no he proclaimed the divine and the physical spheres of humankind to be together a means to live within both in our earthly constraints and still obey the father our founders knew this when i came to the state department our human rights doctrine was a mess we had diplomats across the world talking about human rights that i was deeply unfamiliar with for my study of our constitution the declaration of independence in america's history and so i sought to do my best to corral it we created something we called the commission on unalienable rights it was chaired by a woman named marianne glendon who'd been a former ambassador to the vatican and as a teacher at harvard law school i asked her to chair this commission and the idea was to reground american foreign policy and our human rights in the american tradition i was sued by over 300 organizations within 24 hours of the announcement yes and then several hundred more times uh i wanted to take us back to the tradition that hillsdale college teaches its students and the importance of understanding that as we dealt with our friends and our adversaries around the world i wanted to speak about these fundamental rights we know them from our declaration the pursuit of life and liberty and happiness that are at america's core and so much of what we talk about in our rights discourse today is so deeply disconnected and indeed undermines those central understandings of our nation our founders comprehended the horrific excesses that issued from the deification of emperors like in places like rome our founders understood that the wrath of the kings and queens of europe unleashed when they believed themselves truly to be divine never idolize the state this is the essence of marxism it's what general secretary xi jinping wants you to do here in america our government is not god we must not allow it to impose itself as an object of worship climate change shouldn't be worshipped either the state's bounty is not created by any miracle but it's seized only to be given out and offered to constituents to whom it has incurred debt if state and church are conjoined so are there dominions this is not america it's more like iran and now today afghanistan status always you know them you see them they're now occupying enormous positions of power standards pretend that it is heaven on earth but such a prize never will be realized if this affront is to be vanquished each of us must insist that faith never be banished from the public square or from our schools the second point is the left domination of our institutions you all see it every day some of you sent your kids here to this place to help teach them that this doesn't have to be our nation's present crisis have been implicated by elites who who posture beneficence as they practice rapaciousness woke billionaires esconced on their super yachts lectures about climate change as they flaunt their own admonitions dante wrote a hypocrite's outward appearance passes for holiness but under the show lies the terrible weight of this deceit such persons cannot be entrusted they cannot be trusted but the default they define the new ruling class here in america i'm counting on you all to make sure this does not continue it can't stand for our country cannot withstand deceit cloaked feigned concerned for the dispossessed our strengths in some ways have been turned against us hollywood and america's corporations were critical elements of our nation's soft power i didn't benefit from that as secretary of state it involves global engagement in the sharing of goals to obtain national objectives america's soft power once seemed completely invincible hollywood our media press and international businesses are no longer the forces that they were for democratic development and for market creation throughout the world this has now changed fundamentally hollywood completely infiltrated by china this is not the first time that a male 11 of foreign power has tried to influence our media we all know the history in the 30s where nazis endeavored to subject american films to censorship not only in germany but around the world their plans were in fact stymied by counterintelligence network led by a patriot attorney named leon lewis who was the first national secretary of the anti-defamation league today these big hollywood conglomerates dominate that controls american media american media publishing and news sources you all are subjected to it day in and day out thus access access to chinese markets creates substantial pressure for them to kowtow and obey beijing's dictates jin zhang's security bureau and propaganda departments a place and a leadership holding a million people in bondage today where genocide is taking place they were thanked by disney in the closing credits of their film mulan where i ask is this company's for concern for xinjiang's muslims who are subject to this genocide you should know this too wall street it's caved there are over 250 chinese companies listed on our exchanges here in the united states they're capitalized by more than 21 trillion dollars major u.s companies are now owned or influenced by entities that front for the chinese communist party but an even greater threat is upon us too the world's largest asset managers are pouring into china today billions of your dollars in investment capital from pension funds in california to michigan to my home state of kansas this situation is so fraught with risk that george soros now recommends that congress pass legislation empowering the sec to limit the flow of funds to china that is the first time i've said a nice thing about him in my 57 years something about blind squirrels and acorns president trump and i working with congress did our best we designed financial architecture to defend scores of millions of americans who without their knowledge have had their savings invested in the chinese communist party and chinese companies beijing's fundraising beijing's fundraise is opaque its instruments are passive they're in big assemblages of mutual funds money that will flow to china and not to america they finance the security apparatus the certi security architecture in china and they are erecting a powerful powerful capability that threatens each of us this summer over 500 billion in chinese stock value was lost gutting american investors overseas because the ccp cracked down on its technology companies and its other businesses they did that just for political power but when our woke corporations via may disapprove of georgia's actions to enforce basic election integrity but are silent on china's rampage we have to recognize that businesses as well as wall street firms have been bought or intimidated such feigned moral rectitude and certitude at home is a figly for moral cowardice abroad we can't allow this to contend to continue to happen we can fix it we simply must find the will chinese companies the debate genocide slave labor and the construction of concentration camps cannot be underwritten by america's pension fund or american investors we must not find fund these chinese corporations that advance manufacturing in china so that they can build weapons that will one day threaten your children and your grandchildren and i do not intend to rest until the ruinous underwriting of a totalitarian police state is brought to an abrupt trial [Applause] this administration not so much but the american people get it we must remove this financial dagger before it destroys us education or indoctrination in our schools is a decision that each of will have to make it's connected to the china challenge the fight we must engage is sustained by a sound education this is what i love about this place to nullify what someone may become so that even they themselves do not know what god intended them to be is absolutely inhuman i can't imagine what my life would have been like had i not had the privilege to attend the united states military academy in my freshman year i went to a place called los amigos high school we were the lobos the friendly wolves go figure had a professor's name was daryl manderscheid he taught me geometry and advanced algebra he challenged me every day he set the bar ever higher and because of his support and care i was able to explore logic and the beauty of mathematics that foundation that foundation that he fostered was broad i grew to understand that to learn one must truly listen to solve complex questions one has to make sure that they have a rigorous analysis this is obligatory these ideas that professor mandershad taught me are with me to this day and i thank god that he blessed me with this my wife susan and i pray that our son nick got the same kind of learning in his school and we are proud parents of him because we think it mostly stuck as i as i described in smaller circles he's a good kid most days knowledge around the world is absolutely exploding but paradox our capacity to assimilate and employ that knowledge wisely seems more limited than ever to me i saw this in my time these last four years and most especially in my time serving in congress for six years it's because we can't intelligently speak nor or work faster than we can actually think but the internet and social media demand that we do thoughtless responses are rife i may have given one or two myself from time to time we we all recognize that school choice and not socialist policies of pro and and privatization must happen to reform our schools indeed it is your 1776 curriculum that should be taught each place and everywhere i get asked i get asked from time to time where should i read to get my knowledge and i say a little more of the constitution a little less of the 1619 project is a darn a darn good start we um we fled washington dc we got as far as chantilly virginia that's where we live today that's in loudoun county i don't know if you've all seen it in the news we know the critical race theory that has been taught in those places parents are not going to have any of it's glorious we know it's neither critical nor a theory it doesn't teach the critical thinking that's required for an unbiased explication of the complex issues that face us the 1619 project talks about america's systemically racist and a racist founding we know that's not true the screed itself's been condemned by scholars at hillsdale and throughout the country and yet you can't imagine how many places that is still central to what it is we're teaching the next generation look a theory you know it's a theory is an explanation for phenomenon that are widely accepted by a reputable scholarly community critical race theory was put forward as a political instrument defined by its propagandic intent and the prism of race through which the woke demand we see the world is a prism of limitations it restricts us and we can never accept it we know this we know that the new york times stood behind the 1619 project because for them race is everything what who believes this we we have too much common sense we've made too much progress as a nation to return to a time when people were judged by the color of their skin critical race theory throws us back to that day it's their sole intent it wants to face martin luther's martin luther king's central and most monumental contributions to america fine teach american slavery teach the history of our constitution but this is a noble nation founded on a central understanding that no nation has ever equaled there is no place in any primary secondary school in any college or university for students to be taught that race color religion or economic status determine what they can potentially be or what they can achieve we should never deny the terrible chapters in our nation's history our mistreatment of indigenous nations and peoples the internment of citizens of japanese descent by president roosevelt and his administration's turning away a ship whose jewish passengers simply fled the third right but america's greatness its uniqueness is our ability to reflect upon that and learn and grow and advance against the steadfast principles that our founders bequeath to us we'll never allow our country to again segregate or deny freedom to any of its citizens and any curriculum that categorizes school children by the color of their skin as crt does on the basis of their ancestry of religion is an obscenity and obscenities don't belong in your children's classrooms and america is not going to tolerate it we must fight [Applause] china i've alluded to it already the united states and the people's republic of china are fundamentally different because we honor the individual and they venerate the collective period full stop we now have a big decision to make theirs is a a hive mind in which individualism is an illusion this must never happen here in the united states china's china's past deficit and power suppressed its ambitions but this constraint this constraint has collapsed the old notion of hide your time and bide your strength is gone from china today its attainment of wealth has propelled its quest to displace the united states as the world's leading power the spread of the wuhan virus which china facilitated by spurring international flights from that city while limiting internal travel murdered millions of people our country's losses are one and a half times the number of americans killed in world war ii china's deployment of stealth aircraft today the construction of its first super carrier and the expansion of its nuclear arsenal are threats to our homeland and today genocidal acts against muslim minorities or new imperialism the belt and road initiative china's effort to commandeer the rest of the world is in full push and match xi xingping's intentions and ambitions set alone agreements with developing countries that seek to use national assets as i told leaders all around the world during my entire form years they are prepared to call the loan china's theft of our intellectual property destroyed millions of jobs here in the united states cumulative losses exceed 2 trillion dollars that's just the last decade this sum if divided could have made one in every 40 american families instant millionaires it's staggering china's business software if you look at a laptop in china is nearly all pirated from american businesses the result is that software expenditures in china are a fraction compared to that here in the united states from american companies conveying an enormous unearned competitive advantages to the chinese firms this must cease but for 50 years republicans and democrats and alike in washington just turned away for after all this was china the trump administration was the first to confront what will be the great challenge of the next 245 years for the united states of america i have only partial answers to this but we know that part of the answer lies in sanctions and countervailing cyber efforts but such measures are inadequate if american jobs and wealth are to be preserved we're going to have to take serious action we know how to do this in the united states so here's the closing question xi jinping has said many times to his politburo that america is in decline i don't believe it for a second indeed i believe that decline is a choice but will america muster will america muster the will to avert this disaster history teaches yes but great men had expectations for every american the catastrophe that is afghanistan is one of the greatest self-inflicted wounds that we've seen at least in recent american history was caused by an administration who had a different understanding of american exceptionalism whose words were simply not backed by deeds or by prudent policies derived from an understanding of america a theocratic monstrosity has now declared itself victorious despite the irreplaceable loss of thousands of american lives some of whom were my friends and they killed citizens of our friends and allies as well american military power is the guarantor of our promises as america's most senior diplomat i counted on the capacity for american force to back up the things that were in america's interests and i he the military counted on me to make sure that we seldom had to deploy it it remains a force it remains a force without equal but it must be properly understood this strength can be destroyed by politicized military leaders who shine accountability and care more about appearances than the mission that the constitution lays forth for them where are the generals and admirals who will tender their resignations before complying with politically motivated orders which have put our nation at real risk in 1949 in 1949 an admirals were vote revolt protested actions that could have crippled the united states navy fleet admirals earnest fleet admiral ernest king chester nimitz and haley all active services left active service consequential rank testified before congress against the truman administration's plans and the korean war had proved them right the pentagon must not be composed of pinstripe diplomats we have enough of those it must not be construed of the woke we have enough of those too we need generals who understand their mission i was criticized often but i was criticized too for getting rid of some of these types at the state department my sadness was only that i could not have done more recouping from a failed strategy of nation-building the trump administration was determined to reduce america's commitment in afghanistan you only need to read president trump's twitter account to know that but we had the handle on this we were prepared to do so in a way that reflected the greatness of america would have kept our people safe and we would have done so in an orderly and structured manner for reasons that seem to hinge on appearance as president biden picked september 11th as a date certain for american departure rather than understanding the realities and all the planning that me and my team had overseen they cast it aside i uh as secretary said i worked to build upon the work i'd done as cia director to aid president trump in thinking concretely about how we would execute on his commitment to the american people that we would get our young men and women home from that place and execute a withdrawal from afghanistan while preserving the hard-won progress that we had achieved there what we'd established was the certainty of action if the taliban didn't do what we told them they must do you all have seen how many of you seen the picture of me standing there with mueller broader yes new york times likes to make it famous muller baradar understood donald trump and mike pompeo he he knew that if they violated the understandings that they had reached with us that we would deploy overwhelming force to inflict unbearable costs upon them real losses leaving the extremists in terrible situation i made them know in the meetings with them and by phone as did president trump that if they failed to live up to the promises they made that just like general qasim suleimani the iranian leader who killed soulmar americans they too would never kill another american that we understood how to use american power in a way that reduced the frequency with which we would have to do so that the demise of the kudz force leader the strike that we took resounded to the taliban's consciousness this administration threw it all away i'd created a group we'd seen what happened i was a young congressman i served on the benghazi committee i had seen what happened when the state departments abandons its diplomats abroad and i had worked diligently for my entire time to build what we call the contingency crisis and response bureau it was designed to help in crises where there were american diplomats in harm's way in june of 2021 this administration disbanded that very organization what the bite administration never recognized is that our multiple agreements concerning america's conditional departure from afghanistan were made possible by our administration's vow to use that overwhelming force our attainment of energy independence and our decisive action in destroying the isis caliphate illustrated to all in the world our resolve when we moved our embassy to jerusalem president trump made clear that we would continue to honor the commitments that he had made and the taliban knew this by removing the isis terrorist threat and by changing the status of jerusalem we eliminated obstacles to progress the abraham accords a truly historic set of understandings made possible by great leaders like prime minister netanyahu and the crown prince in the emirates they were made possible because of american leadership our tenacity caused those four muslim countries to have confidence that they could make peace with the jewish state if we'd have had a second term there'd be more i can't prove it but i know it in my heart together we would have we would have erected prodigious barriers to terrorism these triumphs these things about which i played a small part for which i am intensely proud were disregarded by this administration because acknowledging our breakthroughs was deemed by the bite administration as a far greater sin than abandonment of our allies or our principles afghanistan today is lost it's progress nullified it's women dehumanized it is incomprehensible that we departed from bagram air base while the taliban attacked this fortified airfield would have been the only possibility to get every american out it was protected it was an avenue for egress and evacuation so that we would not leave any american behind and then we surrendered billions of dollars in equipment they they valued above above and beyond by the terrorists and by the chinese and the russian engineers who at this very moment are likely duplicating our peerless technologies this taliban effort may think they have won a miraculous victory but i'm confident that america remains strong if america is to be harmed it will only be through our own folly one day one day we will restore and reclaim american greatness i pray that it is soon we have to make sure that our enemies understand that we will strike you without pity if you murder innocents threaten american interests we'll strike you we will know that this is through american honored honor just as our founders had articulated i and you came out on this night you all say no to decline america's path our future is in our own hands we must not choose defeat neglect or shame i went to cairo to give that speech for the singular purpose it was a little bit personal to me president obama had stood in that place and conducted what has become known as apology tour i wanted to go stand in the exact same place he spoke at al-azhar university and so i was set and determined to go there uh about two weeks out my team came in uh including my security team and said sir you're not going to be able to speak at alazar university and i said why he said we're not sure that we can we can protect you adequately and i said the president of the united states spoke from there and he said they said yes they liked him look i grew up in california and spent a lot of my summers in america's heartland in kansas uh dr aaron was talking about all my cousins in kansas everybody thought that'd be a big political advantage but i know those cousins if i got half of their votes i am lucky i have been at the thanksgiving dinner table with them neither of my parents had the chance to graduate from college my mother was a clerk she was employed by the boeing company in wichita kansas as part of the war effort in the late 1940s my father grew up in new mexico he's a salesman he served a short stint the united states navy the korean war but they taught me something in the same way i'm confident you taught your kids something they taught me to respect the importance of hard work so did rising before dawn to help my uncle jim on our farm in winfield kansas i remember being there at 10 years old i thought i was working i am confident i was more trouble than i was worth but by the time i was 14 i was driving trucks and doing my best to lift a bale hey i knew what it meant to work hard i i cherished too my after school job in costa mesa california for paid for my first car a really old fiat x19 i was a killer good scooper at baskin-robbins our purported masters in washington will soon have added 10 trillion dollars to the national debt think about that a trillion dollars is a ridiculous amount of money stacks and stacks in each and every stack a million ten trillion dollars is more than thirty thousand dollars for every each each and every one of you for a family of four that's 120 k in new debt that may happen yet this week would anyone here trust speaker pelosi to mortgage your family's future i didn't hear yes uh no no need no need for a second on the motion look um we we we're going to get this right i i'm deeply committed to it we um there is an awakening taking place there's a reclamation thanks to the geniuses running our government today we're seeing significant inflation too without wealth creation or substantial growth this will hurt everybody in the middle class by putting government in charge these leaders have performed their miracle of making the stupendous vanish we we can do much better and i'm confident that we will but we have to choose this and i believe that we will the taliban think they've got their moment i know differently you know differently free will and its exercise are deeply embedded in our constitution my time in service these four years in administration that was prepared to defend the important things the hard things the things that matter to hard-working men and women all across america was cut abruptly short as i have traveled these last now eight months been to a couple of dozen states and i listen i'm very confident the choice that the american people are going to make don't let xi jinping fool you we are not in decline our declaration of independence has made a resilient people and our constitution has provided a framework by which those resilient people will continue to rise i i spent four years reading the intelligence reports of cia director and then working on some of the toughest problems that the world faces there were pretty dark days and pretty dark moments and so i tend when i'm in front of groups to speak about these dark times these difficult challenges they're real we must confront them but i'm long on america i believe deeply that we will reclaim our sovereignty and our borders that we will claim these central institutions that we will push back against the chinese communist party and that this nation will not choose to allow the next 245 years to deny the very opportunities that permitted each of us to be here tonight to be what our children and grandchildren are living in thank you for supporting this important institution thank you all for coming out tonight and i am happy to answer just about any question [Applause] thank you [Applause] thank you [Applause] thank you all [Applause] right bring it hello all right yes i'm sorry where are you over here gotcha yes ma'am yeah on the left believe it or not so anyways uh thank you for your speech tonight and um i appreciate it and you're one of my favorite people um who are leaders today and i always feel like when i hear you speak i'm like hearing the grown-ups speak i do appreciate that i tried to use my grown-up words tonight yes so um boy what i wanted to ask is um so when trump enacted executive order 13484 i believe on september 12th of 2018 and it was um sanctions in the case of foreign interference in our elections that would protect us from what happened in our election so um from your speech here tonight are you saying that there was no foreign interference in our elections in 2020 yeah definitely so remember i talked i said i'd answer almost anything no i'm i i want to be a little careful here because some of this some of the knowledge that i have here is knowledge that continues to be classified but i think i can answer your question in large measure completely and fully we've had foreigners trying to interfere in our election for a long time in the united states uh the left went after the election of 2016 and then ultimately did so in a way that tried to undermine the united states of america by somehow suggesting that russian interference had an impact on the outcome you'll know how many democrats called president trump a russian asset look we know this we know this was a hoax from the beginning it was false it wasn't true and yet it took a little bit away from america's confidence in our election system so when i think about foreigners interfering in our election i know that we do a pretty good job in protecting them from attacking our vote tallies and vote counts but the real way that they attack our elections is through propaganda and information warfare and you should know they are enabled by large parts of the united states media as well who facilitated this very storyline for the first two years of our administration right it wasn't just adam schiff it was also brian steller right aided and abetted in the most serious way we we watched what state legislatures did during this last election often under the disguise of well we have to do this because of the wuhan virus right we can't go out we can't vote everybody just toss a ballot in the mail we each of us has a responsibility to look forward to make sure that we never have another election that we don't have confidence in it's an absolute imperative as a secretary of state you all can appreciate this as a secretary of state we evaluated elections all across the world almost every week there'd be an election somewhere and i would get a memo saying uh country x had a crappy election uh countrywide had a good free and fair election we would often much like when i was a high school basketball player would give out most improved player awards like like it was a bad election it was better than their last one we have to have one that's better than our last one and i don't mean in 2024 i mean in 2022 that requires a lot of effort it requires you holding accountable your state elected officials who in my judgment many times republican state elected officials did not do the fundamental thing which they were required to do they had the authority to do it to do it well and they were pushed off of that target set i'll leave to voters to determine why they made that set of decisions we have to have a set of elections that are determinative and i guess the last thing i'd say here is we know how to do this this is not particularly complex or hard let's start by making sure there's someone attesting to their identification when they cast their ballot uh it's just there are building blocks there are building blocks to save the election safe elections that we must put in place yes sir all right i'm sorry i'm gonna try i'm just i'm trying i'm just i think i'm gonna try and get to someone else if that's okay yeah yes sir secretary pompeo thank you so much for coming here tonight my name is josiah lippencott i'm a phd student here you spoke tonight about totalitarian regimes over the past year we've seen these lockdowns we've seen mandates throughout the west an increasing large amount of biomedical security it seems that these democratic regimes like australia and then even here have become increasingly repressive of our basic rights and liberties including the right to travel and it seems our government is increasingly unaccountable there was a shocking story that came out just recently that there was a faction in the cia for instance that intended to or plan to assassinate julian assange so it seems like we have an increasing tendency toward unaccountability in uh in our government just wondering if you could speak to that here in the last let me just answer that last one because someone's going to go google that my name is on it they assert that was me that was trying to kill jonah so you should know don't believe michael issakov okay so don't believe everything you read in yahoo news is a good start your core point though your core point about american the about the administrative state and the closure of america and the denial of liberty is fundamentally true i would say this i don't think this is a particularly new phenomenon this didn't just start at least since the 1960s the left has had an active effort to reduce the space for freedom and ideas and for liberty that by controlling the media that i spoke about there are lots of tools that have been used i will say that the this this wuhan virus lowered the water level so we saw a lot more rocks i think the rocks were there before the virus we also saw and and this is maybe how i'll finish the answer to this question we also saw how few americans were willing to push back against this um i you know i can't tell you i'll say this differently i had a handful of pastors call me when they were being told that they couldn't worship in their space in a way that they deemed safe i was proud that those pastors told me said i'm going to do it. and [Applause] there is a long history of civil disobedience in the united states of america i'm not suggesting that it is not complex but i can say this if we don't hold accountable leaders and i don't just mean we think when we think of leaders we think of presidents we think of state u.s senators how about your sheriff's office about your school board how about your city council these people impact our lives we saw that we saw city councils issue these crazy things hardy americans must push back against this we have to go retake i learned a lot i know more about how to do this now than i did too four years ago maybe everybody's a little naive until they get kicked in the head this is a fight worth having about freedom and making sure [Applause] and make and making sure we are not to where this we are this is not this is not the ccp here in the united states today but we started from such a face that's so fundamentally different that the risk that it falls here quickly is real and so time is upon us so thanks for that question it's an important one yes thank you again for coming tonight um i'm going to just tell you my background real quick i for the last four decades plus i spent my career in healthcare started in pharmacy school and medical school then trained at the cleveland clinic in neurosurgery and then practiced for over 20 years in solo practice in columbus indiana then retired about seven and a half years ago so what i'm about to share with you i share with a heavy heart and i want everyone to understand that they should really think about this i wrote it down so it could be as brief as possible the hospital and health care system has been captured by a corrupt bureaucracy and corporatist control that is nothing less than fascism public-private partnerships like the fda nih cdc are putting out guidelines that state health departments hospitals and conventional medical practices owned by larger institutions are blindly following the prep act immunized them for medical legal liability the needs of the individual patient no longer are a priority and this is an utter betrayal of a most solemn obligation between a doctor and a patient and the institutions where these doctors work nations like india are more open to giving the public access to a full spectrum of early treatment options that are now being demonized and outlawed in western nations by the mass media and bureaucratic cronies follow the money sure but also follow the ideology a continuously sick american population health weakened american military are as great a threat to our nation's survival as any diabolical schemes of the ccp and the global collectivist certainly weakening and discrediting our health system is a big part of their plans the public must seek out the truth in science for themselves so my question to you is i know you've had a front row seat to this issue as well and uh people need to start getting better control of their health care so what solutions or options would you suggest at this point yeah well i i'm not i'm unlikely in the time allotted to be able to solve america's health care problems tonight um but i do have three thoughts uh i worked on this a little bit when i was in congress but three thoughts first you got to the politization it's absolutely true certainly saw in the pandemic response in our administration as well i was working on the external piece of this but vice president's task force are working on the domestic one make no mistake about it senior american officials were not not doing science they were doing politics career people second you lived it more up close and personal my experiences with the medical system are mostly just me going in to see doc i still think it's the case in spite of all the shortcomings you identified that most people if given a choice would choose our system over anybody else's you talked about indian outliers fair enough i think most parents given the choice if they said you want to go through the nih system in britain or through assist in any other country i think our system's still still the best we certainly deliver just just as we did with warp speed it didn't surprise me that it was the united states that drove that outcome right we we got it we got a cure uh or at least a vaccine uh the chinese brought us a virus last thing is anything that you centralize and the way that we have centralized our health care system we'll have enormous bureaucratic mismanagement and a subject politization so if you said mike what's the one core idea of how you you try and unpack this entire labyrinth of our health care system it would be to devolve as much decision-making as you can to different places starting frankly with our 50 little laboratories the states you know president trump gave me a lot of room to go work on religious liberty we literally we prioritize this in a way that no other administration has and it didn't take 20 minutes for the byte administration to knock the entire edifice of religious liberty down not one you've got some great leaders that are serving in the united states senate united states congress who care deeply about religious liberty you have big bureaucracies i spoke about this at some length you have big bureaucracies that want to do everything they can to tear it down every place they find it so i'll take a question from over here now yes sir hi secretary pompeo i just thank you for being here i wanted to ask a little bit about our um allies and the world and like the way we've treated them in the past couple of years with this new administration after we like left afghanistan china's been pushing on those borders because they want those rare earth minerals and they've been really flexing because we kind of lost our hold there and russia is kind of seeing that as a threat and so they're trying to move in do you think that we still have like enough standing there that if china or russia makes a big push we can deter them oh the answer is yes the question is if we have the capability the questions do we have the will and the intent to do so no there's there's no doubt about the fact that we still have the capability i heard from leaders all across the world after afghanistan and the question was a little bit about afghanistan it was a little bit about uh the withdrawal but it was a lot about america's credibility it was about the commitments and promises that we had made uh look i i i get it i'll i will never forget the speech that i gave in brussels i was there talking about america first and i was demanding that the european countries pick up more of their fair share i was in a room about this size with about this many people these would have been brussels bureaucrats from the eu i walked out of that room in dead silence even my even my team that's around me didn't even go hey that was that was really good mr secretary it was really good actually we were right uh we do have the moral standing in the world to do this but we have to deliver against that here at home and then we have to demand it from our allies and friends around the world and then we have to make sure we don't make promises we are not prepared to live up to we we were very clear about this we i everywhere i went we talked about putting america at the top right my duty i i raised my hand seven times to swear allegiance to the constitution seven times every time it talked about the same people that i was tasked to work on behalf of it was the american people we were clear about that we were you know we were pilloried in the left press in the international press right for this idea that america was special and exceptional we wanted to defend it i knew if we did that and did that well and did it right every leader in the world would want to see me because we'd make their country a happier more prosperous successful place too and so we worked on it by the way no matter how bad a diplomat i was i never had the french ambassador withdrawn on my watch just for the record we have friends and allies because america is a force for good in the world we have to be sure that we we use that skill set that talent set our capabilities in a way that is the founders talked about a restraint right there was this tension about international engagement i think we struck the balance in a way that made sure we preserve the things that matter to america the interests that we had that were important while still reflecting a force for good wherever we went in the world anyway i hope that answers your question at least in part we have time for one more question very good yes mr secretary yes sir thank you for your uh dedication to duty both militarily and the highest levels of uh elsa lines in this country and as the director of cia and also secretary of state so i personally appreciate it and i think you're a great um person in which our upcoming kids can look up to thank you that's very kind i have two questions fairly simple but maybe not depends how you want to address them one is in your tenure as cia director and also your tender as secretary of state uh from your experience in those two positions can you address briefly the deep state that might exist in our hierarchy within the government our higher level bureaucracies today in almost all of the secretary levels not just the state and cia and also lastly perhaps you can briefly address what you perceive or what you might recommend is where you see president trump might play a role in this government's uh presidency or elected officials over the next next year and also in 2024. sure no i'm happy to take a swing at the first one the second one's trickier but but but you know but but game on you know uh so deep state from my perspective doesn't capture the magnitude of the problem so yes it exists by the way different at the two institutions i led very different institutions i saw different institutions too the department of education civil rights division civil rights division the justice department lost lost what do i mean lost they are no longer responsive to the political leadership that exists in those places i i certainly i i can't tell you how many times i had to pass this the memo back six times at the state department to get them to acknowledge that like i was in charge right and it's not about ego it's i had the duty the responsibility came with the authority if it went badly it was going to they weren't going to blend them it's a real challenge i have lots of theories about how to make it much better because it's imperative the administrative state has to respond to what you all do we the first question was about elections right we're talking about making sure we have a fair election the elections mattered less if the administration just goes on its way no matter who the president is i wanted to make sure that the state department was as responsive to me as it was to hillary clinton right no i mean i right right i want i wanted to make sure right if it's president obama the state department should do the things that president obama asked them to do this is what our founders talked about there weren't four branches six branches nine branches state department thought it had 37. um this is a serious matter that has to be i'm taking there are three unions at the state department i mean the the we didn't get our political people confirmed fast enough either it's that political control that allows you to drive effectively the operations that president trump was asking me to go deliver on right he set the policy he's the one that sent me to pyongyang to meet with chairman kim and he's the one that sent me to know how to meet with the taliban he's the one who said i want you to go to sochi and talk to vladimir putin if the entity is not driving towards those very same objectives you have a deeply unconstitutional and frankly a very very challenging situation and we we probably suffered it as much as any administration we're pretty unique in the way we approach the world and we were different than previous republican administrations as well i i viewed that as a feature not a bug but it made it made that task even more difficult and the challenge of the administrative state even more readily apparent second question questions about 2022 and 2024 and president trump's role in there president trump was a leader who the american people wanted um a significant number of the things that i talked about there wouldn't have happened with anyone else who was running in that field at that time i'm i'm convinced of it he gave me a ton of space to go execute on his vision as well and now conservatives i've been in i've been in the movement for a long time lots of different roles from fifth grade sunday school teacher to you know working on pro-life efforts and school choice efforts back in kansas those of us who believe in these things all have to figure this out people will start voting in the 2022 elections less than 12 months from now it seems like a long ways off like we just we just got through this last election it's upon us and president trump can be an incredibly important part of doing that i the first time i ran for office was in 2010 came in with 70-something republicans in the house of representatives the big class the so-called tea party class it was the last time we threw nancy pelosi out who would dream i'd be campaigning trying to do it again uh i i pray that president trump will continue to be a really important part of that what what happens after that president trump will have to make his own set of decisions right he'll have to figure out if this is the right place and the right call for him as will each person who decides to put themselves forward and offer their services to america both the folks who are running in 2022 and and those who choose to run for president in 2024 as well anyway i hope that answers your question at least in part yeah all right please join me got one more is everybody else need to leave please join me in thinking mr pompeo thank you thanks everybody thank you all thank you thank you thank you bless you thank you talk to my wife we'll see y'all [Applause] okay thank you secretary pompeo and thanks to all of you for joining us this evening we're adjourned thank you very much you

Channel: Hillsdale College

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Published: Mon Sep 27 2021