Tillerson Ousted by Trump: State Department Goes From Bad to Worse
Concerning the State Department today, there's good news and bad news.
The good news is that Rex Tillerson, the ultra-wealthy former Exxon Mobil CEO who's been called "the worst Secretary of State in living memory," is out, fired via Twitter by President Trump, after presiding over a 14-month-long gutting of the department. During his tenure, as Rolling Stone reported last August, Tillerson gutted the organization, drove countless experienced diplomats to the exits, and failed to oppose draconian budget cuts demanded by the White House that further threatened to eviscerate the State Department's power.
The bad news is also that Tillerson is out, to be replaced by current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a blustering hawk in sync with Trump's worst instincts for confrontation and go-it-alone risk-taking in global affairs. Despite his record of incompetence and his failure to consult regularly with the department's veteran diplomats and foreign policy experts, Tillerson at least acted as one of the few "adults" in the Trump administration, serving as a restraint of sorts on issues from the Paris climate change accord to the nuclear accord with Iran to the showdown over North Korea.
The firing was hardly a surprise. It's been widely known for many months that Trump and Tillerson didn't get along and that they had major disagreements on a wide range of issues. Indeed, as Rolling Stone noted in early December, the Tillerson-to-Pompeo switch was rumored as long ago as last fall. But Tillerson's ouster today was particularly ignominious. Though he was reportedly warned last Friday by John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, that his tenure would soon come to an end, Tillerson only learned that in fact he'd been fired today when he learned of the president's tweet during a visit to Africa.
"It is clear that Tillerson was an incredibly ineffective Secretary of State," says Max Bergmann, a fellow at the Center for American Progress who served for six years at the State Department during the Obama administration. "He had fairly conventional views, which puts him at odds with Trump's more radical inclinations," Bergmann tells Rolling Stone. "Tillerson clearly had little influence on the White House, a poor relationship with Trump, and was barely present on the international stage. While Tillerson may have been a voice of some sanity, he also set about gutting the State Department and put a lie to the notion that government needs good businessmen to run it."
https://www.rollingstone.com/tillerson-ousted-trump-state-department-pompeo-cia-director-w517842?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=031318_15
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