New Delhi:
US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would support Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if he quit to run for Senate. Pompeo is likely to run for an open Senate seat in his home state of Kansas. Trump told "Fox & Friends" on Friday that Pompeo "loves what he's doing" but if he thought "there was a chance of losing that seat, I think he would do that, and he would win in a landslide." Kansas is heavily Republican and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, the longest streak that any state has shut out one of the two major US parties.
However, Pompeo has said he’ll remain secretary of state as long as Trump will have him. Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified in the House impeachment inquiry that Pompeo was kept informed of Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine.
Sondland said he “never received a clear answer” on why the White House suspended security aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russian-backed separatists, but that he also “came to believe” it was tied to the investigations sought by Trump.
Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry over claims that Trump pressured Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to look into what the US leader said were corrupt business deals involving Biden.
Last week, Donald Trump dubbed the impeachment proceedings against him as a "double standard never seen" in US history. This came after US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch deposed before the Congressional panel on the second day of impeachment hearings. “A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country,” Trump tweeted as Yovanovitch was grilled on president's interaction with Ukrainians.
Asserting that he has done no wrong, Trump released transcripts of his first phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his electoral victory.
