‘We will simply disconnect’: Mike Pompeo and the Australian TV appearance that caused a diplomatic storm

When US secretary of state Mike Pompeo popped up on Australian television over the weekend it was not to be interviewed by the national broadcaster or indeed one of the main TV channels. Instead he chose to appear on a fringe show with a relatively tiny audience hosted by a self-styled “outsider” who loves Donald Trump’s tweets almost as much as he loves railing against “the left”. To the aides who booked the interview with one of the conservative commentators on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky news channel, this may have seemed a quirky but low-risk environment: Pompeo was unlikely to face tough questioning about the Trump administration’s own performance during the Covid-19 crisis and would be given...