Meet Mike Pompeo, the far-right Christian zealot with Islamophobe ties who will lead Trump's CIA

[DonViejo]

Rep. Mike Pompeo is a Rapture-believing evangelical who sees "radical Islam" at work in small-town America

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

One of the many side stories that has been lost in the chaos of the Trump transition is the fact that far-right Islamophobe Frank Gaffney has been serving as a foreign policy adviser. Considering President-elect Donald Trump’s views about Muslims, this isn’t too surprising.

Trump’s shallow understanding of the issue of Islamist extremism has obviously been gleaned from the right-wing fever swamps and Gaffney owns that end of the bog. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted a full Gaffney dossier.)

But with all the excitement over Trump’s various mounting scandals, Gaffney’s influence has flown under the radar, at least until this week. That’s when one of his close associates went to Capitol Hill to testify at his CIA director confirmation hearing. That’s right, Trump’s nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, is a Gaffney guy.

Michelle Goldberg in Slate delved into Pompeo’s ultra-conservative religious beliefs, which clearly inform his ideas about Islam. And it led him to an alliance with Gaffney, who is so extreme that he believes Grover Norquist is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who has infiltrated the National Rifle Association. Gaffney is so far out there that he was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference for insisting that its board was similarly tainted. According to Goldberg, Trump’s CIA director nominee appears frequently on Pompeo’s radio show:

Gaffney once called Pompeo “one of the most intelligent men I know in public life,” and the two see the world similarly. In February 2015, they spoke about President Obama’s use of the term “violent extremism” instead of “radical Islam,” a linguistic choice that some on the right see as a secret message of solidarity with jihad. Gaffney suggested that Obama might be conveying “an affinity” for ISIS’s cause, if not all its tactics: “the raising up of the Muslim Ummah, a grand rebalancing of America’s role in the world.” Pompeo relied, “Frank, every place you stare at the president’s policies and statements, you see what you just described . . . every policy of this administration has treated America as if we are the problem and not the solution.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/13/meet-mike-pompeo-the-far-right-christian-zealot-with-islamophobe-ties-who-will-lead-trumps-cia/

[Initech]

1. This is the kind of guy who should not be in any position of authority.

[yeoman6987]

2. I thought they all were pretty easy on him during the hearings

I'm waiting for someone to get tough uncomfortable questions.

[underpants]

3. anagram POOPME or MEPOOP

💩

[pansypoo53219]

4. 9/11 2.0 anyone?