joining from us capitol hill, now a principle at the chertoff group, retired general michael hayden. good day to have you on, sir. thank you, general. a lot to get to. let s start with rex tillerson possible secretary of state choice. what can you tell us about him? your comments earlier, joe, about the vetting process, they re very important here. frankly, when he has the endorsement of bob gates, condy rice and jim baker, we would have a lot of time for this guy. i think he will survive the confirmation process. have you had an opportunity to deal with him before? no, i have not. i know him only by reputation, which is really quite strong. i get the question about the relationship with putin. i do believe we can get beyond
rex tillerson as some sort of putin stooge when you have condy rice and james baker and possibly even bob gates saying we know this guy. we like this guy. we think he ll be a very, very effective secretary of state. not only is it going to be hard for him to paint him as such, donald trump doesn t care. i had a conversation with a senior trump aide last night about the backlash and whether or not this is weighing on donald trump and affecting his decision making process. pretty much what i got back didn t surprise me at all. that was we are not going to let john mccain and marco rubio tell us who we can have in our administration. can you imagine a committee hearing, confirmation hearing where bob gates, james baker, and condy rice come before the committee saying this person is qualified to be the next secretary of state? two, some have asked you can t discern what president-elect trump is looking for in a
only from donald trump and also donald trump s aides, is that they believe this guy is in a league of his own. he s been on the world stage for 15, 20 years. he s run one of the top companies on the planet. the big knock this weekend on twitter has been that he s vladimir putin s stooge. as i pointed out last night, he was recommended condy rice is not called donald trump yet. condy rice called donald trump to say this is your man at state. bob gates also reportedly recommended rex tillerson. rex tillerson has been a close friend with jim baker. why do i bring all of this up? just to tell you it s going to be very hard for marco rubio who came out against him and very hard for john mccain and very hard for lindsey graham to paint
confirmation. two objections one he worked in the oil business, which i don t hold against him, and george schultz came to the secretary of state job although he worked in government before and we ve had politicians, john kerry, we ve had academics, condoleezza rice, and we ve had generals, general colin powell, all in this position. never tried a businessman. somehow he can t do it but he s clearly qualified to do it. he s on any level pretty smart, very impressive. the other thing is he speaks trump s language, right? they re business guys. they connect. criticism from marco rubio and john mccain. rubio tweeted being a friend of vladimir is not an attribute i m hoping for secretary of state.
what we re going to have here is what we had in the first bush administration where you had rumsfeld that would run over nsa director in condy rice. trump is going to listen to mattis. it s obvious that mattis has his ear. general mattis is if not, one of the most respected military men living in the country today. so he s got general flynn s respect. that s for sure. when you talk to people in national security community they say mattis is great on his own merits but he s also a great counterbalance to general flynn. he can keep him in check. that s something maybe trump considers. flynn will be the first to say mattis is smarter than him. he outranks him. he defers to him. one of the keys you just mentioned is rank. rank is important in the military whether you re retired or whether you re enrolled in the military right now today. general mattis is a four-star general. general flynn is a three star. one extra star counts for a lot. and they know it. you ll be headed to a