No, Mr Pompeo, It's You and Your Boss.

        I have watched an interesting dynamic unfold in the press over the past several days. The initial item was the much earlier (November) announcement that SecState Mike Pompeo was to receive an award for Trump administration efforts in repatriating US hostages. Based on numbers alone, this was absolutely justified.

        For those who may have forgotten, Jim Foley was an American journalist who was detained and eventually beheaded in Syria in 2014. The Foley family has created an award, The James W. Foley Freedom Award, one of which was to be given to Secretary Pompeo next week.  Now here’s where it gets all “Trumpish.”  The Award presentation was cancelled.

        The immediate Pompeo/administration response on Fox (where else) was to blame, as this administration always does, someone else. “…..and yet, it sounds like some in the media, who were underwriting this event – sponsors for the event, said ‘if Pompeo is there, we won't be.”  This is laughable at face value, but when one considers that CNNs Christiane Amanpour, hardly a Trump booster was scheduled to be the presenter, it becomes even more ludicrous. 

       

       What is at play here, per usual in this administration, is the immediate death of truth at the hands of the Trump spin machine. Even a Washington Post op-ed writer bought into it, in an article headlined “This is How Bad Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Gotten in Washington.” In the body of the article we find “At the last minute, the award was ‘mysteriously’ (italics are mine) rescinded and Pompeo disinvited from the gala that he had agreed to attend.” Further on, we read: “As Pompeo explained in a gracious letter to Diane Foley, mother of James Foley, “I understand that the Foundation decided to rescind the Freedom Award and my invitation … due to pressure from its media partners and your fear, stated in your recent letter, that some guests at the dinner would not show my office proper respect if I attended.” The (Right biased) Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported, “Knowledgeable sources said the group’s 'media partners’ promised to boycott the event if Pompeo got the award."

       Wow, all that because of dislike for the Donald? So, what really happened? That is best discerned from the presenter of the award, Diane Foley, who, upon being told how the rescission of the award was being portrayed, wrote this to the Mr. Pompeo, (and the Post as a letter to the editor):  “The decision with respect to the James W. Foley Hostage Advocate award was mischaracterized in Marc A. Thiessen’s April 4 column, “This is how bad Trump derangement syndrome has gotten in Washington.

        While it is accurate that our foundation intended to present our hostage freedom award to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and we extended the invitation to him on Nov. 19, 2018, we ultimately decided we could not present the award as planned because of the dramatic change in circumstances when the Trump administration did not press for genuine accountability from the Saudi government for the brutal murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. We communicated the reason for this decision to the secretary’s team on Jan. 11.

Our decision had nothing to do with whether we received media pressure.”

        Recapping, briefly, Pompeo knew full well why the award was rescinded, but attempted to make this another bitch slap at the non-Trump-sycophant media. Sadly, another newspaper was also complicit in the misinformation flow, the Washington Examiner. Finally, the Post’s op-ed guy didn’t do due diligence either in accepting the Examiner’s phony “sourced” allegation. God forbid Pompeo should simply admit, “I serve a man who is devoid of character and has remained relatively mute regarding the brutal abduction and murder of a journalist. As such, the awarding Foley foundation, established to commemorate such an abducted and beheaded journalist, refused to turn a blind eye.”

        As Mrs. Foley said, it wasn’t about media at all, but about character or the lack thereof.