Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, article II, section 2 of our Nation's founding document grants the Senate the prerogative to confirm the President's Cabinet nominees. One of those nominees--the current administration's most important nominee, at least today and this week-- is Mike Pompeo, the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Director Pompeo has been asked to become the Nation's chief diplomat, the Secretary of State, and now filling this post is entirely up to the Senate. The relevant questions couldn't be graver or more obvious.

Do we as a country, with so many longstanding relationships around the world, really feel the need for, the utter necessity of a Secretary of State or not? Do we believe in furthering international diplomacy by filling this post expeditiously or not? Do peace talks--for example, in North Korea--rank among our highest national priorities? Do we want to demonstrate as much by confirming Mr. Pompeo so that those talks can proceed, or is this Chamber too self-absorbed in partisan divides to see the much bigger, global picture?

It is time to be serious about Director Pompeo and what this nomination represents. The stakes are high, and the time is short. So why is it, then, that some of our colleagues, all of a sudden, seem to have suffered from sort of a situational amnesia?

Take this, for example. Our colleague from New Hampshire said last year that Mike Pompeo's nomination for CIA Director demonstrated his ``strong condemnation of Russian aggression'' and ``gives [her] confidence'' that he can step into this role and effectively lead the CIA. Now she seems to have forgotten those previous positive statements. Frankly, it is hard to reconcile what she is saying now about her vote on the nominee for Secretary of State and her vote on the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now our friend from New Hampshire says she has deep concerns and cannot support Director Pompeo's nomination to the State Department. How is it that you support a nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency--the leader of the intelligence community and an Agency so important to our national security interests--and then turn around and say you cannot support the nomination for Secretary of State of the same person whom you have just spoken so highly about?

Well, like I said, it is hard for me to reconcile the differences. Perhaps that would make sense if there were some allegation that Director Pompeo had done a bad job leading the CIA, but no one thinks that. Indeed, we have learned--from leaks, unfortunately--that he traveled to meet with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, to lay the foundation for the talks that will now occur between Kim Jong Un and President Trump on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. I can't imagine a more urgent, a more dangerous, and a more necessary negotiation than the negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Having been in Seoul last September and seeing how close North and South Korea are, it is not just the nuclear weapons that could be put on intercontinental ballistic missiles that we have to be concerned about but the conventional weapons that are laid right there along the demilitarized zone that could literally cause enormous loss of life and bloodshed just across the border in South Korea.

So I applaud Director Pompeo going, at President Trump's request, on that clandestine mission to try to pave the way to denuclearize North Korea. If anything, my confidence in Director Pompeo's fitness to serve as Secretary of State is enhanced by his role as a diplomat, even during his current role as Director of the CIA.

Well, people are practically unanimous in their praise for Mike Pompeo's conduct as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is public knowledge that he has great rapport with the President. When you are representing the U.S. Government to foreign governments, the knowledge that the Secretary of State has a close working relationship with the President of the United States is the coin of the realm. That is why foreign leaders talk to the Secretary of State and take the Secretary of State seriously.

Mike Pompeo has earned the President's trust through his hard work and mastery of the intelligence work done at the CIA, and that has been the reason why the President now seeks to elevate him to the office of Secretary of State.

The objections of our colleague from New Hampshire, and by extension her party, are not about anything substantive. Nobody is pointing to something he did wrong or something they wish he would have done differently as a reason to vote no. They think Director Pompeo is too close to the President and asked whether and to what extent the Director will be able to exercise independent judgment. This is the chief diplomat of the United States, the chief representative of the President of the United States, and our colleagues are asking: How can he exercise independent judgment and separate himself from the person who appoints him and at whose pleasure he serves?

It just doesn't make any sense.

Our other colleague, the senior Senator from California, has come close to saying this very thing. She has said about Director Pompeo that he is smart and he is hard-working and devoted to protecting our country. This is our colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, who voted to confirm him as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She knows a lot about it, having been chair of the Committee on Intelligence here in the Senate, but now she says she senses a certain disdain for diplomacy in Mike Pompeo that she believes disqualifies him to be our senior diplomat--the same person who over Easter flew over to see Kim Jong Un to lay the groundwork for this negotiation, which could well save hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of lives that would be lost in the event there were military conflict between North and South Korea and the United States and our other allies.

Now, like our friend from New Hampshire, I admire the Senator from California and enjoy working with her, but frankly I don't understand her turnabout.

Mike Pompeo is thoughtful, careful, and has a remarkable ability to see the world through multiple lenses at once. That is because of his time at West Point, his service in the U.S. Army, and his experience practicing as a lawyer. It is because he has worked as a leader in business and he has represented the men and women of Kansas in Congress. He knows the intelligence community inside and out, not only from his service as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency but also as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He is indisputably smart, and he sees all the angles. That is precisely what will serve him so well when the State Department and others work tirelessly to untangle and resolve some of the most intractable of issues--arms control, international security, human rights violations, and religious freedom, just to name a few.

Well, what has happened since our friend from California said Mike Pompeo is smart, hard-working, and devoted to protecting our country? What has changed since then? Well, nothing has changed, except for perhaps the political calculation that it is perhaps in the Democratic Party's best political interest to oppose every one of President Trump's policies and nominees because that way they stay out of trouble with their political base. One reason Senators are elected for 6 years from a whole State is, presumably, that we can get beyond those sorts of parochial political concerns, particularly on matters of such national and international import.

Our Democratic colleagues have made it no secret that they are not fond of the President and some of his instincts and decisions, but isn't that all the more reason for them to not sacrifice rational judgment in the case of this highly qualified and widely revered nominee? After all, defeating a Secretary of State nominee would be extraordinary, historically speaking, and it would send a terrible message to our friends and allies around the world. This is nothing to be trifled with. President George W. Bush's first nominee, Colin Powell, was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote. And his second, Condoleezza Rice, had 85 Senators vote in her favor. Hillary Clinton received only two no votes, and John Kerry only three. Every Secretary of State nominee since 1925 has been reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably. That may change today.

This body and this institution should not forget its own history and traditions, and we should not give up on the tradition of bipartisanship, goodwill, and fairness to the opposition.

I am proud to support Mike Pompeo as our next Secretary of State and hope that all of our colleagues across the aisle will have the political courage to join those of us voting yes.

I note that there have been some press releases, some announcements, and a number of our colleagues have stepped forward and said they will vote yes for Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. I applaud them in their political courage for standing against the tide.

For those who refuse--especially for the ones who have flip-flopped in the matter of a year--Mike Pompeo is a human being, a public servant, and somebody well trained and well prepared to be the Nation's top diplomat. I just simply don't understand how they can reconcile those two polar opposite positions, or perhaps they can explain it to the American people. I cannot.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

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