Call it “Citizen Kane,” take two. The 1941 cinema classic painted a less than flattering portrait of a media tycoon modeled after William Randolph Hearst — a depiction that did not exactly get its director, OrsonWelles, many invitations to Hearst Castle. This  week, a widely circulated and somewhat noirish Wall Street Journal article put forward the idea that a former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, “killed” the chances of a former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, joining the next Trump administration. Was that all, though?

Despite his on-air popularity Mr. Carlson was fired last year by News Corporation, the company that owns both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Whatever acrimony led to that split has not diminished with time — and judging by Wednesday’s article the feud has only intensified. At issue is the contention that Mr. Carlson used his influence with President-elect Trump to keep Mr. Pompeo from getting the top job at the Pentagon.

Another factor is that Mr. Pompeo, who also had a brief stint as director of the CIA during Trump’s first term, once declined an invitation to appear on Mr. Carlson’s Fox show to discuss the assassination of President Kennedy: Given the show’s high ratings, that was a snub.  

Clashing egos come with the territory in the worlds of media and entertainment. Yet a closer look at some recent additions to Mr. Pompeo’s impressive resumé show what could be perceived as potential conflicts of interest for someone who was reportedly seeking a high-profile public office.

On November 9, Trump wrote onTruth Social that he would “not be inviting” either Mr. Pompeo or a former ambassador to the  UN, Nikki Haley, to be a part of his upcoming administration. Prior to that, Politico reported that Mr. Pompeo was interested in the defense secretary post. At the same time, Mr. Pompeo has been doing paid work to lobby on behalf of foreign businesses — something of which Trump has reason to be wary. 

In July, Reuters initially reported, Japan’s biggest steelmaker, Nippon Steel Corp., hired “former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to help with its effort to acquire U.S. Steel.” In an opinion article for the Journal last week, Mr. Pompeo tried to position a Japanese takeover of the American steel  giant as something of a counterweight to Beijing — an argument that the president-elect isn’t buying.

There is more. In November 2023, Mr. Pompeo joined the board of directors of  Ukraine’s biggest telecommunications company, Kyivstar. A press release from the company of which Kyivstar is a subsidiary, Veon, makes prominent mention of Mr. Pompeo’s previous role as secretary of state. 

Shortly before Americans went to the polls in  November, Mr. Pompeo had a dinner meeting with the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as the Sun reported. Although politics was not likely on the menu, some sources speculate that commercial matters might have been.

So what? None of these engagements are compromising or prima facie conflicts of interest — at least, not while Mr. Pompeo is a private citizen. Many Americans work for foreign companies. Beyond that, cashing in on one’s governmental experience after leaving office is common practice. The optics this time, though, are not great. 

It was a son of President Biden, Hunter, whose involvement with a now defunct Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, lent fuel to the first impeachment of President Trump. In his first presidential term, Trump during a phone call to President Zelensky said that he didn’t want “our people like Vice President Biden and his son [contributing] to the corruption already in the Ukraine.”

That is not to suggest double-dealing on the behalf of the former secretary of state. There are potential legal questions, though, such as registering as a foreign agent as per the FARA act. That became a significant issue in the Hunter Biden investigations, but one that Mr. Pompeo will have dodged, at least for now, with his exclusion from Trump’s second-term team.

How advocating for, and profiting from, the commercial interests of foreign companies serves the interests of ordinary working Americans far removed from the plush and narrow confines of Washington, D.C., and  Manhattan, however, is another matter. 

There could be personal animus between Trump and the former state secretary over the latter’s alleged failure to prove his loyalty to the former president by saying the January 6, 2021, riot at the  Capitol was “unacceptable” and refusing to say Mr. Biden stole the 2020 election, as the Journal reported.

There is almost definitely bad blood between Mr. Carlson and the closest modern equivalent to Hearst — News Corp’s founder, Rupert Murdoch.

Mr. Murdoch is also the publisher, through his imprint HarperCollins, of the memoirs of a former attorney general, William Barr — who Trump once called “a swamp creature.”

Trump, in his first post-election press conference, said that “everyone wants to be my friend.” That was held at Mar-a-Lago, seen by some as the new Xanadu (the name of the tycoon’s fictitious estate in “Citizen Kane,” which also happened to be in Florida). 

“Everyone” is something of a loaded word these days, but on the surface at least, the president-elect is trying to keep things friendly. It isn’t January just yet.