Casting aside his own advice to American diplomats and bulldozing a long tradition of secretary of state non-partisanship, Mike Pompeo plunged into the heart of the 2020 presidential race on Tuesday with a speech supporting Donald Trump's reelection. The address was roundly condemned by Democrats and others as an inappropriate breach of decades of diplomatic precedent and a possible violation of federal law prohibiting executive branch employees from overt political activism while on duty. Indeed, Mr Pompeo himself had reminded State Department staffers of those restrictions only last month. Yet he went ahead with the speech, which was recorded in Jerusalem during an official visit to the Middle East, over strident objections, complaints of hypocrisy and the threat of a congressional investigation. Although the State Department maintained Mr Pompeo was speaking in his personal capacity without any US government support or staffing - therefore, legally - the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee identified him a "secretary of state" in previews of his convention remarks. But while the venue and audience were extraordinary and perhaps problematic, the content of Mr Pompeo's roughly four-minute speech would not have been out of place in any number of his previous public appearances either at home or abroad. Mr Pompeo delivered standard recitations of Republican party claims about the successes of Trump's "America First" foreign policy against Russia, China and Iran. He said they made his family - wife Susan and son Nick - and all Americans safer. He spoke of the defeat of the Islamic State's physical caliphate, Mr Trump's pro-Israel agenda and the president's determined vigilance to guard against the "predatory aggression" of the Chinese Communist Party.
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