How Mike Pompeo’s War on WikiLeaks Doomed His Comeback with Trump

A 3-year-old story about his CIA tenure came back to haunt him—with a big boost from Tucker Carlson

Mike Pompeo testifying during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on "Worldwide Threats" on February 13, 2018. Leah Millis/Reuters

It’s long been something of a journalistic truism: You never know the impact a story is going to have after it’s published— or, perhaps even more unknowable, when it might have any impact at all.

It’s a lesson I relearned in vivid technicolor this week when the Wall Street Journal popped a front page exclusive detailing how Tucker Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, torpedoed Mike Pompeo’s hopes of becoming Trump’s Secretary of Defense by accusing the ex-CIA director of, among other misdeeds, plotting to assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“Carlson went public with the allegations about Pompeo and Assange in an April interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, without providing evidence,” the Journal reporter, Vivian Salama, wrote in the original version of the story.* 

The story is a fascinating window into the increasing MAGA-world influence of Carlson, not to mention his podcast interlocutor, Rogan, in their civil war against traditional national security hawks like Pompeo. But contrary to the Journal’s account, there is no mystery about where Carlson got the idea that Pompeo tried to have Assange killed, even if he somewhat garbled what actually happened.