File photo of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 

Washington (People’s Daily) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out in anger Saturday at an NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly who accused him of shouting expletives at her after she asked him in an interview about Ukraine.

In a statement, Pompeo said the journalist had “lied” to him twice and he called her conduct “shameful.”

Pompeo claimed that this was “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt” President Donald Trump and his administration.

“It is no wonder that the American people distrust many in the media when they so consistently demonstrate their agenda and their absence of integrity,” Pompeo asserted.

But NPR said it stood by Mary Louise Kelly’s reporting.

The controversial interview caused a lot of attention in US.

According NPR, Kelly, in an interview on Friday, asked Pompeo about the former US ambassador to Ukraine and these questions made him angry. She said that Pompeo, who had walked out of the interview only after he "leaned in, glared at me," was waiting for her in his private quarters.

"He shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the [9-minute] interview itself had lasted," Kelly told Shapiro. "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."

Pompeo called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. Kelly pointed to Ukraine, and Pompeo put the map away, saying “People will hear about this.”

In his statement on Saturday, Pompeo further berated Kelly. "It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency," he wrote. He ended the statement with an assertion that appears to falsely imply that Kelly was unable to locate Ukraine on a map. "It is worth noting," he concluded with no further explanation, "that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine."

NPR Senior Vice President of News defended Kelly, saying in a statement that “Mary Louise Kelly has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.”

According ABC, a group of US Senate Democrats blasted the Secretary on Saturday for his response to Kelly, expressing their "profound disappointment," in a letter addressed to Pompeo. According ABC, Pompeo has a history of berating reporters whose questions he dislikes.