Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted Saturday, during his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), that conservatives and the Trump administration, despite strong resistance, have "fought hard" on nearly every front and insisted the Trump administration "truly upended the status quo."
"In the last few months, we have been called clowns, deplorables, ignorant, rednecks," said Pompeo. "Some said I was the worst secretary of state of all time. Since I last saw you, the Chinese and Iranians don't think much of me either."
However, he said, "we have resisted enormous resistance to socialism and cancel culture. We have resisted seeing our liberties and freedoms swept away... We fought hard on nearly every front and we will always fight for it."
He also outlined the achievements reached under the Trump administration, including protecting American workers and jobs.
"We put African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, everyone was back to work," said Pompeo. "President (Donald) Trump did that. We understood it mattered. We focused on the economy to put Americans back to work. We did it by also securing our borders, giving Americans a chance to make a good wage and take care of their family."
The hallmark of the administration, he added, is that "we were bold and fearless."
"I hear Democrats pretend they care about jobs in America," he said. "But before the seats were warm, they destroyed 10,000 jobs on the pipeline."
He also ridiculed former Secretary of State John Kerry's insistence that people out of energy jobs will be able to work making solar panels.
"You can expect the cheap solar panels from China to start flooding in and it will not be good for the United States of America," he said.
Pompeo added that the administration had a "restrained foreign policy" but required, "we came hard and heavy."
He also noted that Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, and "defended Americans and Israelis in the Middle East."
Pompeo touted the administration's successes in the Middle East, including the Abraham Accords, which "revealed decades of failed negotiations," and the tough stance that was taken against China and North Korea.
"The North Koreans haven't tested a long-range ballistic missile and they have not tested their nuclear weapons," said Pompeo, adding that through Trump, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani was killed.
"Most of the liberals still won't admit that ridding the world of the terrorist was a good thing," said Pompeo. "America First takes real courage. It takes the secretary of state to walk in the room and tell it like it is and a president who had his back."
He drew even more applause when he said that it was his job to deny taxpayer dollars to be used to perform abortions in other countries, that he worked to secure the border and to protect the right to firearms.
"Liberals pretend to care about the poor, then they side with the union bosses against the workers," he said. "We need to get every one of our children back in school...they want to defend -- defund the police. Canceling our freedom to assemble peacefully is antithetical to what our founders understood about America."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.