'Who mentored you?' Retired US Army general slams Mike Pompeo and his West Point graduating class

• Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who commanded the Army's Infantry Center and was later responsible for the training of Iraqi forces, railed against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
• "Disgusting performance by [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo]," Eaton said on Twitter.
• Pompeo graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1986 - a fact that was not lost on Eaton, who also graduated from the college in 1972.
• "What is wrong with West Point class of 86? Who mentored you?" Eaton added. "What happened to the West Point Honor Code in your class? America is very badly served by these men."
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A retired two-star US Army general rated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's performance as "disgusting" and described Defense Secretary Mark Esper as a "lightweight coward."

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who commanded the Army's Infantry Center and was later responsible for the training of Iraqi forces, railed against the two cabinet officials in the Trump administration amid some heavy criticism in recent days. Eaton now works as an adviser to the progressive VoteVets political action committee.

"Disgusting performance by [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo]," Eaton said on Twitter. "Lightweight coward [Defense Secretary Mark Esper]."

Both Esper and Pompeo graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1986 - a fact that was not lost on Eaton, who also graduated from the college, in 1972. The class of 1986 has been affectionately dubbed the "West Point Mafia" by some graduates, due to their senior positions in the Trump administration.

"What is wrong with West Point class of 86? Who mentored you?" Eaton added in his tweet. "What happened to the West Point Honor Code in your class? America is very badly served by these men."

The military academy's honor code, which simply reads, "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do," is known as the "bedrock of character development" and drilled into the cadets during their four years of training.

Pompeo has recently come under fire after a contentious interview with a news reporter on Friday. In an interview with NPR's "All Things Considered" co-host Mary Louise Kelly, Pompeo evaded a series of questions about former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and ended up cutting the conversation short.

Pompeo later "shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the [9-minute] interview itself had lasted," Kelly said on NPR, adding that "he was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine."

"He asked, 'Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?' He used the F-word in that sentence and many others," Kelly said.

In an official statement from the State Department, Pompeo claimed Kelly had "lied to me, twice ... in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record."

Kelly said she did not agree to an off the record stipulation and provided email exchanges setting up the interview to support her claims.

Pompeo has been accused of obfuscating his dealings between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, one of the political figures embroiled in the ongoing Senate impeachment trial. Pompeo previously downplayed his association with a damning whistleblower complaint, one in which Trump was accused of conditioning US military aid to Ukraine for a state-sponsored investigation into his political rivals. Pompeo later confirmed he was one of the participants of the phone call between the two leaders.

"Most politicians can be evasive; it's part of the parlance of politics," NPR host Scott Simon wrote in an opinion column from October. "But Mike Pompeo is a trained soldier who conducts the foreign policy of the United States."

"In the weeks ahead, Secretary Pompeo will be asked to comply with subpoenas and requests for records," Simon added. "You may wonder if he will use his skills to dance, slide and misdirect, or be as honest and direct as the West Point honor code he knows by heart."