Secretary Michael R. Pompeo With Dan “Ox” Ochsner of Ox in the Afternoons

You are subscribed to Collected Releases for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary Michael R. Pompeo With Dan "Ox" Ochsner of Ox in the Afternoons 04/30/2020 07:11 PM EDT Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State Via Teleconference QUESTION: Right now, though, we have former Kansas congressman, CIA director, and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Welcome, sir. Good to have you on. SECRETARY POMPEO: Dan, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show today. QUESTION: Well, Mr. Secretary, first the most important question: As a former power forward, did you ever think you'd see a day in America where neighborhood basketball games would be outlawed, sir? SECRETARY POMPEO: I find that just unacceptable. We've got to get back to basketball in the driveway. QUESTION: I mean, come on. Who would have ever dreamed this, right? SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah. No, I would have never dreamed it, too. The calamity that's been foisted upon the United States by what happened in Wuhan, China is of enormous proportions, and I never thought I would see this moment where we have people restricted in this way. We need to get back to it just as quickly as we can. QUESTION: Amen to that. So that – well, you've led me into it, then. How do you balance your relations with the Chinese Government, which I assume we have to do as a world power, but when the American proletariat now is catching on that they're all bad actors and they've been playing us all these years? SECRETARY POMPEO: So look, as for the issue of the virus, we've been very clear to the Chinese Communist Party they have a special responsibility. This virus originated in Wuhan. They have a special responsibility to share with the world the data, the information, the need to be transparent. We need reliable partners in this, and we hope that China will be that. We've got to figure out how this happened, not only for purposes of understanding this virus and to be able to develop the therapeutics and the vaccine and the processes, but also to make sure that something like this can never happen again. And so you work with them. You find places where you can get cooperation, and you demand of them what the world needs, which is an open, transparent process by which to evaluate how the heck this all came to be. QUESTION: How important is it that we get to the bottom of it and seek some retribution against them for this? SECRETARY POMPEO: President Trump has been very clear. Our primary focus today is reducing the risk to life, keeping people as healthy as we can, getting our economy cranked back up so people like my friends back in Kansas can do what they – they keep telling me, like, "Mike, I want to get back to work. I want to get back to my church." All those things that we know and value as Americans. "And my basketball game with my buddies." We have a responsibility to do that. When that's done, when we've reached that point, we want to make sure that we understand what happened here. We know that Wuhan was the origination point, but we need to figure out how this was transmitted. And then ultimately, I think the world will form a judgment and there will be an accountability that is associated with entities or people that caused this enormous calamity that we find ourselves in today – not just America, but all of our friends and allies around the world are suffering in this same way. QUESTION: Reassuring. I appreciate hearing that, Mr. Secretary. So yeah, with the other countries we have, what, we had 70,000 Americans out in 128 countries. How does the Department of State track and manage getting everyone back home? SECRETARY POMPEO: Well, it's been an enormous process and a wonderful one, too. Our team has done just really great work. We had Americans – some of them on mission trips, some of them on business, some who were on a vacation of a lifetime – and all of a sudden, buses, trains, and planes stopped moving around the world and they were stuck – some of them in the Amazon forest, some of them at the foot of Mount Everest, and the State Department sprung into action to work to get them all home. We're now at 75,000-plus Americans that we've gotten back to their families. We still have some to go. But it's been heartwarming to see how much these Americans have come to appreciate the fact that when Americans are stuck, when Americans are challenged, we're going to do everything we can to make sure they get back to their families, back to their homes. It's been a great project repatriating that many people – something we didn't have on our plan for 2020, but our team has done fantastic work. QUESTION: I appreciate that. And will we see, do you think, policy changes allowing international travel in or out of our country in the future? SECRETARY POMPEO: Of course. We have to get back to that. We have to let this all get back going. And so we're working along with Department of Transportation – that is, the State Department – the Department of Transportation, Health and – or, excuse me, DHS, who handles immigration issues at our border. We need to work to develop systems that not only get those aircraft flying again, get them back into regular flight patterns, but we need to do so in a way that gives individual Americans and those traveling all around the world the confidence they can to get back on those planes. We want those visitors to come see all the great things in America. We want our citizens to be able to travel the world and do business and go on vacation. Those are good things that we need to get that going just as quickly as we can. I know that day will come. I hope we can move it forward. QUESTION: Do you see some new vetting procedures maybe put in before we let people set foot on our soil? SECRETARY POMPEO: I do. I think we'll have to make sure that those people who are thinking about traveling have confidence that as they board that airplane they are not at risk, and so certainly in an interim period, before we get to the point where there is a known therapeutic that has high confidence or a vaccine, if people are going to get back to traveling, they've got to know that there is some screening mechanism that gives them confidence. We're working to try and figure out what that is, and we're working with countries. People traveling to places like the United Kingdom or Europe or South America, we're working with those airports and countries to develop exactly those algorithms so we can try and get people back into business, back into commission. QUESTION: Great. Well, Mr. Secretary, a quick final question. What if Barack Obama was president during coronavirus right now? SECRETARY POMPEO: Well, I'm pretty sure – you can ask his former vice president – they wouldn't have shut down China as quickly as we did. They likely wouldn't have shut down travel from Europe as quickly as we did. And if you talk to the medical professionals, they will all say that the decisions that President Trump made there saved hundreds and thousands of American lives. I think it's likely the case that the beating that we frankly took for – the President took for making that decision probably would have prevented them from doing that. I'm happy we were able to do that. We got that decision right at the front end. It was worth the opprobrium that we suffered from the World Health Organization, from the Chinese Communist Party, and from others even in our own country who said, well, that's xenophobic, that's racist. We were making good decisions for the health and safety of the American people, and I'm really proud of what we did. QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I wish we had more time, but I appreciate the time you had for us and all of your service to this country, my friend. Great to have you on with the Ox. SECRETARY POMPEO: Great. Thank you, sir. Have a good day. Stay connected with the State Department: External links found in this content or on Department of State websites that go to other non-Department websites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.    Update your subscriptions, modify your password or email address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your email address to log in. If you have questions or problems with the subscription service, please contact subscriberhelp.govdelivery.com. 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