On Mike Pompeo Blowing a Gasket

By now everyone has heard about the interview with Mike Pompeo by NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.

"During a Friday interview with Pompeo on US policy toward Iran, All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly asked the secretary of state whether he owed an apology to Marie Yovanovitch. Yovanovitch is the former US ambassador to Ukraine who was subjected to a smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani and was unceremoniously removed from her post in April, bringing an abrupt end to her 33-year career as a foreign service officer."

"Pompeo was not pleased with the change in topic or the question. “You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran,” Pompeo replied. “That’s what I intend to do.”

Kelly, noting that she’d confirmed with Pompeo’s staff that Ukraine would be part of the interview, didn’t give up — and Pompeo abruptly ended the interview."

This is where, logically, the incident would have ended. Pompeo could have walked away, and nobody could have stopped him.  Instead, he chose to call the reporter into a closed door session, and told her to turn off recording.  Personally, this is where in my opinion, it would have been a good place for her to walk away, since she had gotten all she could out of him. But be that as it may, she stayed. And he proceeded to rip her a new one, in a tirade which included profanity and abusive language. And then had the nerve to claim later that this part had been "off the record", and that it was a betrayal of professional ethics for her to talk about it. Whatever.
Washington Post called it classic gaslighting. Pompeo then recounted a somewhat bizarre request that he made of her, to identify Ukraine on a map (apparently not labeled?). He claimed that she misidentified it by a distance of 3000 miles, pointing to Bangladesh  instead. Which was unlikely, considering that she held a master's degree in European studies from Cambridge University.
So what is the meaning of this incident, other than that Mike Pompeo behaved like a jerk?

From the Vox article cited above:

"This isn’t the first time Pompeo has lashed out at those asking him tough questions. He’s demeaned a reporter’s question about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities as “insulting,” has taken Fox News’ Chris Wallace to task for asking questions that he characterized as almost “ridiculous,” and has even attacked members of Congress, like when he angrily lectured Sen. Tom Udall over a question about Trump’s foreign business interests.  But Pompeo’s fury this time seems directly related to the growing controversy around the treatment of Yovanovitch." 

"...In November, Yovanovitch testified under oath in the House impeachment inquiry that his comments “sounded like a threat.”

"Since then, new evidence has emerged suggesting that associates of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, had Yovanovitch under surveillance in Ukraine."

"...Additionally, on Friday, ABC News reported on the existence of a tape of the president ordering Yovanovitch’s firing. A voice that sounds like the president’s can be heard demanding that an aide “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow ... Take her out.”

Following the release of Parnas’s WhatsApp messages by the House Intelligence Committee as part of a larger documents trove last week, Ukraine announced that it had opened a criminal investigation into the purported surveillance of Yovanovitch.

"...In the same interview, Pompeo conceded that it was his “obligation as secretary of state” to open an investigation into claims that Yovanovitch had been surveilled.

"However, he failed to offer any defense of Yovanovitch, a veteran of the State Department who has served under both Republican and Democratic administrations."

So my take is that Pompeo is feeling a bit embarrassed over his failure to support Yovanovich (but not enough to have done anything about it). And is also pretty nervous about the rocks being overturned in the impeachment proceedings. And that he needs to take Anger Management 101.