Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a personal Twitter account on Saturday, as speculation is running high that he will ultimately fight for a Senate seat in his home state of Kansas. Pompeo hasn’t commented yet on the newly created account.
The first post he made was a picture of a “Beat Navy” button – a reference to the Army-Navy football game that was due to be played on Saturday afternoon. He then made a separate post under the hashtag “#GoArmy”, sharing a number of pictures from the stadium:
Among the first 26 accounts followed by the new Pompeo account were: KFDI News, “Wichita’s news, weather and traffic leader for more than 50 years”; KAKE News, “the most powerful name in Kansas news”; NBC affiliate KSN News Wichita; and Wichita State University.
Although Pompeo was born, went to school in California, and studied at a college in New York and Harvard, he moved to Wichita in 1998, with his Twitter account identifying him as “a proud Kansan".
The latter detail adds to rumours that he might return to the House of Representatives for Kansas - the post he held before joining the White House.
Pompeo dismissed the speculation, although POTUS said he could run if he thought Republicans risked losing the seat vacated by retiring Sunflower State Sen. Pat Roberts. The president addressed the hypothetical scenario last month:
"Mike would win easily in Kansas", Trump suggested. "He came to me and said 'Look, I'd rather stay where I am,' but he loves Kansas, he loves the people of Kansas. If he thought there was a chance of losing that seat, I think he would do that and he would win in a landslide".
Nevertheless, political scientist Ian Bremmer, called the owner of the new account “secretary of (the) state (of Kansas)", but, some time later, deleted the tweet, according to The Guardian.