In the last minutes before the handover of power at the White House, there is one person who is still running against time to stir up conflicts and confrontation in a show of his "last-day madness". It is Pompeo, the outgoing US Secretary of State who prides himself on "lying, cheating, and stealing".

In the past ten days and more, Pompeo took an intense series of outrageous moves, from lifting the restrictions on US official engagement with Taiwan to re-designating Cuba as a "state sponsor to terrorism" and to ramping up the already harsh sanctions on Iran.

Moreover, he took social media as the stage of his farewell show by tweeting more than 60 posts in three days, bragging about what he had "accomplished" on his so-called China issue in the past few years, and maliciously attacking the Communist Party of China and China’s policies, displaying unimaginable hysteria.

It's not hard to see for whom Mr. Pompeo was putting up the show. As many American media analyzed, he was trying to put shackles on the incoming Biden administration through the "diplomatic blitzkrieg". The New York Times described the Secretary of State as "leaving no bridges unburned on the way out the door," and Foreign Policy cited American officials privately calling what he did the "fire sale diplomacy".

Pompeo’s hysteria is a reflection of his desperation. The recent storming of the Capitol Hill lent a lethal blow to the political life of the outgoing American leader. Pompeo, as his right-hand man, made a last-minute attempt at political speculation afterward and tried to draw a line between the leaving leader and him, but it was too late. The “last-day madness”, including boasting his so-called achievements and stirring up confrontation, was nothing more than what he deemed as the last straw for self-salvage.

All his crazy moves were aimed at one ultimate goal. While laying obstacles for the incoming administration, Pompeo was also stocking up “political legacy” for his own presidential election in 2024, said Washington Post, which continued to cite an American official it interviewed as saying bluntly that Pompeo was saying that he would uphold as his election program in 2024.

As a matter of fact, Pompeo’s ambitions to climb to the pinnacle of power has never been a secret in the US. In the past three years or so, he kept instigating confrontation and division to pander to the right-wing forces; he unprecedentedly attended the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in the capacity of Secretary of State in an embarrassing eagerness to please the evangelical Christians; he hosted “Madison Dinners” with taxpayer dollars to ingratiate himself with financial groups and the media; and he, violating the State Department’s tradition of neutrality, joined the Republican assembly from Israel by delivering a speech on video, trying hard to brown-nose his Republican boss.

When the top diplomat of the world’s only superpower puts his personal political ambitions over national interests, his diplomatic policy is doubtlessly enormous damage to the whole world. During his nearly 3-year term, Pompeo flamed up hatred and division everywhere and staged one political farce after another in the international community in collusion with other “political arsonists” at Washington, making his country a global laughing stock.

The world sees clearly that the American diplomacy under Pompeo’s lead has pushed unilateralism to the extreme and made a habit of quitting international organizations and treaties, causing rare damages to the international order. He has stoked the new Cold War and suppressed and besieged China every chance he could in a futile attempt to curb China’s development. He has torn apart the Iran nuclear deal and is considered the black hand behind the assassination of the senior Iranian commander. He has also continuously intimidated and suppressed European countries and driven them farther away from the US.

With his diplomacy approach riddled with intimidation, lies and sanctions, Pompeo has shown the world Washington’s true color of arrogance, hypocrisy and imperiousness from under the veil of “democracy”, “liberty” and “human rights” that it has been preaching.

No wonder the New York Times commented that Pompeo had damaged the reputation the US State Department has established through centuries of services and sacrifices, and The Atlantic Monthly deplored bluntly, “we are living in a failed state.” Even media in Kansas, the hometown of Pompeo, commented on his tenure as the country is viewed with a mixture of sorrow, anger and pity.

But the bell has tolled. No matter how crazy Pompeo acts now, it’s just a last-gasp struggle. He bragged about how well history would remember what he had accomplished, but actually what history will remember is exactly how he had harmed the whole world’s interests in service of his personal selfish agenda.

Good-bye and good riddance to Mike Pompeo, the worst Secretary of State in US history!

(This article is originally published on news.cctv.com and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.)