Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election.
The devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.
After saying he was weighing a run in January, the former Trump administration official and CIA director released a statement on the decision. “To those of you who this announcement disappoints, my apologies,” he said, calling it a personal choice.
“And to those of you this thrills, know that I’m 59 years old. There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary.”
Pompeo, who also spoke about his decision on Fox News on Friday, would have been the second former Trump cabinet member to enter the race to challenge the former president for the 2024 GOP nomination, joining former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her campaign in February. Former vice-president Mike Pence is also considering entering the race and has stepped up his travel and activity in early voting primary and caucus states.
Where Haley and Pence have openly expressed differences with Trump, Pompeo has had no public split with the former president and hasn’t been rebuked by him, as many of his would-be rivals have. Pompeo recently referred to Trump as a “great boss”.
The former congressman graduated at the top of his class from the US Military Academy in 1986 before spending five years on active duty, deployed for a time as a cavalry officer commanding tank movements along the border between Nato-backed western Europe and Soviet-occupied eastern Europe.
The retired Army captain is a Harvard-educated lawyer who practiced law in Washington and founded two Wichita businesses – an aerospace firm and later a petroleum equipment manufacturer – before entering politics.
Pompeo – a witty and sometimes gruff politician – easily won four consecutive terms in the US House representing southern Kansas. He sat on the House intelligence committee as well as the select committee investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
The 2018 withdrawal from the Iran deal and imposition of crippling sanctions have prompted death threats against Pompeo, who remains under 24-hour security protection provided by the state department.
“I can’t tell you how heartwarming and humbling it has been when strangers have told me they pray that I run to defend our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, our families and our country as the most exceptional in the history of civilization,” Pompeo’s statement said.
