Stay informed on important LGBTQ+ news.Sign up for our email newsletter.

Enter Your Email *

Advocate Newsletter

Subscribe To
OUT MAGAZINE

Print > Digital >

Give a gift • Renew

Search form

Subscribe To
OUT MAGAZINE

Print > Digital >

Give a gift • Renew

Search form

Scroll To Top

By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Politics

Sec. State Pompeo: Multiculturalism Distorts Glorious Founding of U.S.

The outgoing secretary of State delivered a Twitter tirade against diversity.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

Read Full Bio

Trudy Ring

January 19 2021 9:14 AM EST

trudestress

We need your help
Your support makes The Advocate's original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Become a member today to help us continue this work.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, known for his far-right and homophobic views, is ending his tenure with a Twitter rant against multiculturalism.

In a Tuesday morning tweet, he contended that efforts to recognize the diversity of the U.S. -- a nation of many cultures -- are un-American and authoritarian.

\u201cWoke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms \u2014 they're not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker.\u201d
— Secretary Pompeo (@Secretary Pompeo) 1611066600

He followed up with a tweet saying he had gotten "a lot of grief from the left media and other elites."

\u201cGot a lot of grief from the left media and other elites who thought you needed their filter. America is for YOU, not them.\u201d
— Secretary Pompeo (@Secretary Pompeo) 1611068400

Pompeo has remained a loyal backer of Donald Trump, even though several other Cabinet members and high-ranking administration officials have left early in the wake of the president's incitement of the mob who stormed the U.S. Capitol when Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election was being certified by Congress. Many political observers speculate that Pompeo is planning a presidential run in 2024. He noted on Twitter that his State Department account will be archived when he leaves office with the end of the Trump administration, and he directed followers to his personal account.

His condemnation of multiculturalism came one day after the holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and shortly after the White House's 1776 Commission released a report downplaying the role of slavery in the nation's founding and early history. This isn't the first time Pompeo, a former CIA director and before that a Republican congressman from Kansas, has denounced multiculturalism. At a 2015 event called a "God and Country Rally" at a Wichita church, he cited a prayer that a minister had once delivered to the Kansas legislature, saying, "America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We'd endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle."

Trending stories

Pompeo is known for many anti-LGBTQ+ stances, such as opposition to marriage equality and to allowing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to serve openly in the military. At the State Department, he surprisingly recognized Pride Month, but he has also fought against recognizing the citizenship of children born overseas to same-sex couples who are U.S. citizens. And just last fall he spoke at an event for a group that endorses conversion therapy, even though many State Department staffers were outraged.

He's getting roasted for his tweet against multiculturalism.