August 24, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on a trip to the Middle East, the first of two senior U.S. officials to travel to the region this week as the Trump administration presses an ambitious Arab-Israeli peace push that President Donald Trump hopes will burnish his foreign policy credentials ahead of November’s election.

Pompeo is traveling to Israel, several Gulf Arab states and Sudan and will be away when he is scheduled to speak on Tuesday to the Republican National Convention, which will nominate Trump for a second term. Should Pompeo appear by remote or recorded video, it will break a long tradition of secretaries of state declining to participate in the public political nomination process.

Previous secretaries of state have shunned overtly partisan rhetoric. Pompeo’s three immediate predecessors made a point of being out of the country and unavailable during their political parties’ presidential nominating events. Pompeo is likely to tout Trump’s Mideast policies and the recent agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalize relations.

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