Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slaps down NBC journalist Andrea Mitchell: 'Do some reporting.'

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took aim at a veteran NBC journalist over her musings on Twitter that he might have been acting inappropriately over his speech in Georgia.

Andrea Mitchell hinted that Pompeo was being hypocritical when he brought up former secretaries of state to defend his scheduled speaking engagement in Georgia during a very heated campaign for the U.S. Senate seats from the state.

Mitchell quoted Pompeo as saying, "When [former] Sec. [John] Kerry traveled to Massachusetts or Sec. [Hillary] Clinton traveled to NY those were coastal elite states. Those were all fine for secretaries to travel to."

She added, "Huh? That's where their families lived."

Pompeo didn't take kindly to the rebuttal to his argument and he fired off a tweet accusing Mitchell of poor journalism and offering another explanation for his trip.

"Andrea - Do some reporting. When I went home to Kansas to see family, your network was howling saying I was violating the Hatch Act," tweeted Pompeo.

"The claims were found to be bogus. This trip was planned long before the Georgia runoff. Do some reporting," he added.

Mitchell responded to the tweet but did not address the substance of his criticism.

"Mr. Secretary thank you for finally answering one of my questions!" she tweeted.

Pompeo was defending his speech on Wednesday at the Georgia Institute of Technology about the threat to the U.S. from China. He mirrored the assessment from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in an op-ed that China was focused on dominating the globe economically, politically, and militarily.

Many foreign policy experts expect that U.S. policy will soften against China when President Donald Trump vacates the Oval Office.

Here's Pompeo's speech about the threat from China:

Pompeo discusses China's challenge to US securitywww.youtube.com