Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill was one of 14 Democrats who voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s nomination of Mike Pompeo as CIA director in January 2017.
Now she’s not sure she’ll support the former congressman from Wichita as Trump's secretary of state.
“I’m still looking at that,” the Democratic senator told Missouri reporters Wednesday. “They’re different jobs and they have a much different role. One is running an agency that has a very clear definition of what its job is as it relates to national security. The other is much broader in terms of policy considerations that are represented on behalf of our country.”
Liberal activist groups are pressuring Senate Democrats to block Pompeo’s nomination.
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McCaskill said she’s “taking a look at it” but she hasn’t made up her mind yet.
Last year, McCaskill said, she examined Pompeo’s record as it related to the job of running the CIA and determined that he was qualified and had a working knowledge of the subject matter.
“Now I need to look at his record in the context of what he would be doing as secretary of state, and we’re going to give that a close look and I’ll have to decide whether or not he is qualified,” she said.
“What I’m most worried about our foreign policy is a lack of consistency and a lack of reliability as it relates to reassuring our allies that we are still here, that we are still with them that we still support them and want them to be our allies. So I want to look at his record through that prism before I make a decision.”
McCaskill has supported 74 of Trump's executive and judicial nominees so far, while opposing 32. She missed five votes.
Four of the missed votes were because of her husband's surgery, her office said, and one was for her brother-in-law's funeral.
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