Iran Press/ America: "Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — 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," he wrote Tuesday.
Pompeo, whose ancestors came to the U.S. from Italy, also re-upped a past statement saying “Censorship, wokeness, political correctness, it all points in one direction – authoritarianism, cloaked as moral righteousness.”
According to CNN, Pompeo's assertion that "multiculturalism" is not part of the American ethos was swiftly denounced as a shocking and racist affront to the workforce he leads, the agency he represents, and the values it is meant to espouse.
"Unconscionable," one diplomat said.
Another diplomat asked how this is supposed to make diplomats of color, or those of non-Christian backgrounds, feel.
Career diplomat Conrad Tribble said on Twitter that multiculturalism "is one of our greatest strengths as a country, and I go to that well often as an American diplomat. It's hard to overstate the global soft power impact of America's cultural diversity."
"We need to do a better job of representing that, not reject it," he said.
"This is a truly unfortunate and disturbing statement for the secretary of state to make at a time when the task ahead for this country is to pull all of the diverse sectors of our country together and become the 'United' States once more," said retired Amb. Charles Ray, who served 30 years in the foreign service and 20 in the US Army. "It also sends a troubling message to those countries struggling with interethnic strife and dictators who exploit the ethnic and cultural divisions within their societies."
The Association of Black American Ambassadors, where Ray serves as communications director, said in a statement Tuesday that "while it was disheartening to read outgoing Secretary of State Pompeo's tweet, we are pleased to note that Secretary-designate Blinken, in his statement for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has expressed his 'commitment to having a diplomatic corps that fully represents America in all our diversity ... who look like the country we represent.'"
Political strategists view Pompeo's tweet as part of a push in his final days to appeal to the Trump faction of the GOP, with the outgoing top US diplomat speaking to a very specific group of Republicans who still support President Donald Trump, his anti-immigrant policies, and his attacks on the so-called "politically correct."
"He is very clearly positioning himself to be an inheritor of the Trump base. This is a message that precisely goes along with the things that the President has said," said GOP strategist Douglas Heye. "When I saw this tweet I thought, well, a lot of us hoped that this administration would have stood for conservatism, but that was all thrown out the window in favor of all things Trump."
The State Department did not respond when asked for an explanation of the tweet.
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