Conservative Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and CIA director during the first Trump administration, criticized the second Trump administration for considering an invitation to Russian leader Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 Summit this year, which will be held at Trump National Doral, the president’s golf resort in Miami, Florida.
Pompeo wrote on social media that the invitation “would signal to the world that aggression works, and that appeasement is back on the table. America is better than this.”
[NOTE: In November, Pompeo joined the advisory board of Ukraine’s leading defense company Fire Point, which is known for its long-range drones capable of striking targets deep inside Russia.]
Inviting Vladimir Putin to the G20 would signal to the world that aggression works, and that appeasement is back on the table. America is better than this.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) April 24, 2026
Critics are responding with anger to the potential Putin invite, including former Minister for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs of Denmark Rasmus Jarlov, who replied to Pompeo’s comment about America being “better than this” by writing, “You used to be, but you have fallen very deeply lately. It is terrible to watch.”
Political blogger Andrew Chakhoyan also replied: “Exactly right. Banality of the Russian evil is not to be appeased or entertained at a G20 summit, it is to be named, confronted, and defeated.”
Turkish political scientist Dr. Hasan Ünal of Maltepe University in Istanbul also replied: “It would just show the US and West’s decline is unavoidable unstoppable. And that would be a fact.”
[NOTE: Putin has not attended a G20 summit since 2019 due to the COVID pandemic and then Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week: “President Putin may go to Miami as a member of the G20, or he may not go, or another Russian representative may go.”]
