Since becoming secretary of state in 2018, Mike Pompeo and his wife have thrown about two dozen private, unpublicized dinners on the taxpayer’s dime, turning the State Department into a party space for heavyweights in media, business, and conservative politics, according to an NBC News report. These soirees were known as the “Madison Dinners,” named after America’s fourth president and fifth secretary of state, James Madison, and held in the department’s storied Diplomatic Reception Rooms. Supreme Court justices, billionaire CEOs, and powerful arms manufacturers were all offered seats at the table, but so too were an outsize number of Fox News personalities—once again revealing that the network’s ties to the administration go deeper than just favorable coverage and Donald Trump’s incessant promotion.
NBC reported that some officials involved in the dinners took issue “internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions—complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to _Susan Pompeo’s personal email address.” The State Department’s legal counsel responded to concerns by saying that the secretary’s events should relate solely to foreign affairs, two department officials told NBC.
However, a glance at the guest lists suggest that diplomats, foreign officials, and international relations experts weren’t always the mainstays. At one January dinner, the couple invited Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade, one of Trump’s reliably supportive hosts. Others invited to the dinner, which was held as the president was attempting to deescalate his military confrontation with Iran following the assassination of top general Qasem Soleimani, included national security adviser Robert O’Brien; the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud—a notable inclusion, given the Gulf kingdom’s ongoing proxy war with Iran—and Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy.
The exact date of the January dinner is unclear, but on the same day as Soleimani’s assassination early that month, Pompeo appeared on Fox & Friends to justify the killing, saying—without citing evidence—that Iran was planning “to kill Americans in the region.” Kilmeade, who dropped all attempts at objectivity by attacking critics of the strike while speaking to Pompeo on air, repeated this line as he argued with Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera later in the show, shrugging off his colleague’s reservations by insisting he will “cheer on” Soleimani’s assassination. Three days later, Kilmeade ran more cover for the administration’s drone strike, saying, “Just keep in mind, if you are going to be critical of the president for not hitting Iran after they killed—took out our drone and not hitting Iran after they rocketed the Saudi oil bases and not going after Iran after they tried mining the gulf. You can’t also be critical of the president when he does take action.”
At a Pompeo dinner in May 2019, NBC found Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s name on the invite list, along with American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes Schlapp—then White House director of strategic communications and a current Trump campaign official—and Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A’s CEO and a conservative donor known for having bankrolled anti-LGBTQ causes. Pompeo sat down with Ingraham for an exclusive interview that same month to discuss the U.S.’s efforts in Venezuela to dethrone Nicolás Maduro and install Juan Guaidó as president. Pompeo, a former CIA director, called U.S. meddling in the country a “humanitarian support” mission, and Ingraham and Pompeo agreed that Venezuela is a “beautiful country” destroyed by socialism, and took turns chastising Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar for questioning U.S. intervention in the region.