Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joked Monday that he would stay in his current role until President Donald Trump “tweets me out of office.”
“I’m going to be there until he tweets me out of office, which I’m not counting on, at least today,” Pompeo said at a Road to Global Entrepreneurship Summit event in Overland Park, Kansas.
Asked how long he plans to be in his role, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells a crowd in Kansas, "I'm going to be there until he tweets me out of office." https://t.co/4xmpLtAGK2 pic.twitter.com/tx0B5VF74e
— ABC News (@ABC) March 18, 2019
Pompeo represented Kansas’ Fourth District in Congress until resigning to become CIA director in 2017, and the trip home has sparked speculation about his political future.
The Hill, which flagged the secretary’s comment Monday, noted that Pompeo’s predecessor in the job, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, was himself unceremoniously fired via Tweet a year ago.
Trump has a history of blindsiding Executive Branch officials with firings, perhaps most infamously in his dismissal of then-FBI Director James Comey, who reportedly learned he’d been fired during a speech to FBI employees in Los Angeles when the news flashed on TV screens in the room.
