Pompeo: Biden's 'Armageddon' Remark 'Reckless'; Keep 'Quiet Diplomacy' (Newsmax)
By Eric Mack | Sunday, 09 October 2022 01:10 PM EDT
President Joe Biden should not have abandoned "quiet diplomacy" and made the "reckless" remarks about the world being on the verge of "armageddon," according to former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
"Oh my goodness: First of all those comments were reckless," Pompeo told "Fox News Sunday."
"I think that even more importantly, they demonstrate maybe one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the last decades, which was the failure to deter Vladimir Putin in the same way that the Trump administration did for four years."
Pompeo adding the comments come at "a terrible risk to the American people" and Biden needs to warn Putin against using nuclear weapons but not talk armageddon.
"I hope that they are doing this quietly," Pompeo added.
Biden issued the warning of nuclear war Thursday in a fundraiser, hearkening back to former President John F. Kennedy's nuclear standoff with Cuba in October 1962.
"We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis," Biden said.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby defended the president's remark.
"The president was reflecting the very high stakes that are in play right now," Kirby told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The stakes might have been raised higher after the exploding of the bridge in Crimea on Saturday, according to Pompeo.
"My guess is that the Ukrainians had something to do with it, but we'll have to wait and see how that unfolds," he said. "We do know for sure that this is humiliating for Vladimir Putin. He built this bridge. I remember the pictures of him driving across it.
"It was one of their great achievements. I think it was 2018 when that bridge was built, so it's nearly brand new and to watch it in flames, to watch the rest of the supply lines out of Crimea into southern Ukraine at risk is certainly something that is a game changer on the ground in Ukraine. As Trey reported this morning, Ukrainians are doing phenomenal work of liberating town after town after town and the Russian military is failing desperately."