Pompeo Concedes That Biden is Probably Right to Say Putin is a Killer

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that President Joe Biden was likely correct to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a killer. 

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith asked Pompeo about Biden’s comments, after contributor Rich Edson noted that Putin has invited Biden to a live discussion.

The invitation comes after Putin responded to Biden’s remarks calling him a killer by cracking that it “takes one to know one.”

After telling Smith that the exchange “seemed a bit childish,” Pompeo said that Biden should focus on putting America first, adding that the Trump administration “did that with respect to Russia.”

Anchor John Roberts later noted that one could argue against the judgement of calling Putin a killer, asking if Pompeo disagrees with the statement.

“You could argue the prudence of the American president calling the Russian president a killer,” said Roberts. “But are the facts in dispute here?”

Despite first condemning Biden for using “empty rhetoric and name calling” in his comments about Putin, Pompeo conceded that the president might be right to call Putin a killer.

“Well he worked for the KGB for an awfully long time and we’ve seen what he did to Mr. [Alexei] Navalny, the intelligence committee made pretty clear that they knew this was a Russian operation that intended to kill Mr. Navalny,” Pompeo responded. “I think those facts speak for themselves.”

Navalny, a prominent political foe of Putin’s and a vocal Kremlin critic, fell ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow after he was poisoned.

According to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an agent who was responsible for cleaning up evidence connected to the poisoning, Navalny’s colleagues  planted a nerve agent, Novichok, inside of his underpants in an attempt to kill him. A previous report claimed that Russian officials attempted to kill the politician with a poisoned Negroni.

Watch above, via Fox News.