WASHINGTON: Mike Pompeo has said that among the dozens of world leaders he met as the US Secretary of State he found the “most unpleasant” was Chinese President Xi Jinping, who threatened to stop sending PPE kits to America if it kept asking for accountability from Beijing on Covid.
In his book titled ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,’ former US Secretary of State Pompeo, 59, writes that he held multiple interactions with the Chinese leader and found him “dour” and a “quintessential Communist apparatchik”.
He writes that Xi told stories about Chinese victimhood and talked about his “demands to avenge grievances from long before any of us were born”.
“Personally, I thought Xi was dour. While Putin can be funny and mirthful, even while being evil, Xi was not so serious as dead-eyed. I never once saw an unforced smile,” Pompeo writes in the book that hit the bookstores on Tuesday.