Pompeo is a perfect example of this thing that just baffles me. He owes America *everything.* His grandparents immigrated from dirt-poor regions of Italy at the turn of the C19th. He graduated *first in his class* at West Point. https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1349064882583457795

He has a law degree from Harvard. He was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. Went to DC and joined a blue-chip firm. Also made a fortune in private enterprise. America gave the grandson of dirt-poor immigrants the opportunity to do all of that.

He knows *damned well* what the Constitution says.

He's also seen enough of the world to know *damned well* how lucky he was to grow up in a country at peace, governed by that Constitution--and to know *damned well* what happens to a country in a civil war

--which is exactly the brink to which Trump has taken the United States, only recently the inarguable leader of the free world. We now have a GOP that thinks, "storming the capitol in an attempt to assassinate our elected leaders" is somewhere between "great" and "no biggie."

He knows *damned well* what the world thinks of us now, and how endangered we are because of it--and not just us, our generation, physically, but the idea of government of the people, by the people, for the people. It could, truly, perish from this earth-

because of this idiocy and sedition.

Why would Mike Pompeo want *any part* of that? What's the motivation? He already had a ton of money, earned legitimately, because America's a place where immigrants' grandkids can start their own companies and get really rich.

He's had all the professional accolades a man could want.

There's no secret he could be trying to protect from exposure that would be more shameful than what he's doing out in the open every day.

There's no Kompromat compromising enough to be worse for his image than being known to history as "the heat-seeking missile to Donald Trump's butt."

He *knows* it is wrong.
He *knows* Trump is dangerous.
He *knows* the lies Trump has told have now become murderous--and could well unleash unfathomable violence on the country that gave him everything. This is the country he wants to hand on to his kids?

He should have known from the beginning--and *he did.*
This is what he said when he was stumping for Rubio in Wichita in 2016:

"Trump would be an authoritarian President who ignored our Constitution.”

He expressed disgust--properly--about Trump’s boast that soldiers would commit war crimes on his orders.

Trump certainly made good on his "pro-war-criminal" promises. Pompeo *knows that is wrong.* Wrong to pardon war criminals, worse still to elevate them as heros.

Pompeo then: American soldiers “don’t swear an allegiance to President Trump or any other President. They take an oath to defend our Constitution, as Kansans, as conservatives, as Republicans, as Americans."

He hasn't even acknowledged Trump’s role in inciting the siege of the US Capitol, no less condemned it, no less immediately, publicly called, as a cabinet member, for Trump to be removed, no less resigned.

Why? What could make a man do that? Ambition? Does he think the only thing he hasn't yet achieved is ruling the whole country, and that after Trump dies, maybe he'll emerge as the top warlord and declare himself Emperor?

He can't, seriously, think that. He's too old and too fat to survive for a minute in anything but a pampered, First World liberal democracy. He's not going to last a day in the kind of world he's helping to usher in.

Inability to admit he made a mistake? Fear for his life? Does he think he'll be assassinated by some deranged Trump supporter?

I don't get it. America has been good to him. It was good to me, too.

It's the ingratitude that just makes no sense.