Mary Louise Kelly's interaction with Mike Pompeo was like satire. If only it was

Before celebrities and their publicists figured out that a goofy, faux-homeboy named Ali G was actually the smart, edgy comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a succession of political and cultural figures – Newt Gingrich, C Everett Koop, James Baker, Gore Vidal, EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman, among others – agreed to sit for televised interviews with the “rapper.” Almost always, Ali G’s calculatedly crass, good-humored stupidity brought out his subjects’ petty vanity and condescension, their humorless self-importance. The unmaskings – the glimpses of bad character – were at once horrifying and hilarious.

I thought of those episodes while listening to NPR journalist Mary Louise Kelly’s January 24 interview with secretary of state Mike Pompeo. One imagines Pompeo or his staffers assuming that a pretty blonde woman with such a good-girl name, Mary Louise Kelly, would lob softballs and take notes as he explained the government’s Iran policy. Someone must have failed to do due diligence, alerting the secretary to Kelly’s paradoxically calm and hard-hitting approach, to the unperturbed persistence with which – in interviews and in reporting from Russia, China and Iran – she has pursued the facts.

On air, Pompeo cited the Trump administration’s “deep diplomatic efforts” and success in “building out” a “significant” coalition of nations to deal with Iran. He blamed Iran’s problems on Obama’s policies and characterized the US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani as an act that delivered a “message of freedom” to the oppressed and grateful Iranians.

Throughout, their conversation provided the upsetting yet oddly pleasurable experience, so reminiscent of Ali G, of hearing Pompeo’s manner change as he began to realize that he’d underestimated the reporter. In this case, the interviewer’s true identity wasn’t the issue, but rather the fact that Kelly is so good at her job, persistent and tough in asking questions that Pompeo didn’t want asked. A model of inquisitorial technique, she calmly talked over him even when he was loud and insistent. She knew when to reframe his assertion as a question, when to pose her query in the simplest possible terms. She knew when to cite the facts that contradicted Pompeo’s claims.

It was hard to miss the unease that crept into Pompeo’s voice when Kelly shifted the subject from Iran to Ukraine, which, he said, he hadn’t agreed to discuss. Kelly replied that his staff okayed it. Pompeo steeled himself to continue, praising the current administration for working to repair the neglect and damage that, he asserted, Ukraine had suffered under Obama.

Meanwhile Kelly was finding ways to pierce Pompeo’s doggedness: his robotic armor. When he portrayed the state department as an efficient, congenial unit, Kelly mentioned the career department officials who had resigned because of mismanagement and lack of support. When the Secretary rejected these “anonymous” allegations, Kelly quietly pointed out that they were made by a senior officer, Michael McKinley, testifying under oath. Did Pompeo do anything to protect – or apologize to – ousted US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch? Did he, at any time, object to the “back-channel” foreign policy governing our relationship with Ukraine?

At that point a Pompeo aide announced that the interview was over. Kelly thanked Pompeo, who refused to speak to her but only glared.

What followed was more disturbing. According to Kelly, a staffer asked her to meet with Pompeo in his office, where Pompeo shouted at the journalist. Ferocious and vulgar, he claimed that America didn’t give an “f word” about Ukraine – a chillingly undignified pronouncement from our secretary of state. Then, as he raged on, he produced a map of the world with the names of countries scrubbed out. He asked Kelly to identify Ukraine, which she did, correctly. Pompeo’s vague threat at the end of their meeting – “People will hear about this” – darkly echoes Donald Trump’s warning about former ambassador Yovanovitch, “Things are going to happen to her,” and more recently about representative Adam Schiff: “He has not paid the price, yet.”

I’ve heard it suggested that Pompeo would never have treated a male reporter the way he behaved toward Kelly. It’s possible, but hard to prove. Males do bully males, and one imagines a certain amount of that transpiring regularly in the Oval Office. In fact Pompeo’s demeanor provides a window into White House culture: the shouting, intimidation, vindictiveness and untruth.

Things further degenerated the next day when Pompeo channeled his fury at Kelly into a statement attacking the “unhinged” media’s efforts to damage the president. “It is no wonder the American people distrust many in the media when they consistently demonstrate their agenda and the absence of integrity.” This prompted five Democratic senators to write a letter condemning Pompeo’s assertions as “corrosive”.

The senators couldn’t be more correct, nor could this situation – like so many we face today – be more alarming. And yet I couldn’t help thinking, with grim amusement, of the panicked aides likely ordered to produce, in minutes, a map of the world without words. I pictured the chaos – the perpetual damage-control hysteria – that’s business as usual for the staffers on the brilliant HBO series Veep.

Ali G, Veep – the egregious character flaws that Pompeo revealed in his treatment of Kelly might seem simply grotesque or even comical if it were a TV series, if our democracy weren’t at stake. How happily we could chuckle at Pompeo’s public meltdown if our future weren’t threatened by his – and every politician’s – disregard for the truth, by every attempt to bully, discredit and silence our all-important free press.

• Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences