Diplomat. Rex tillerson spent his career at exxonmobil. Hes never conducted foreign affairs, but hes now trumps pick to be secretary of state, and its tillersons perhaps most notorious foreign relationship, a longstanding business set of dealings with Vladimir Putin that has many lawmakers throwing cold water today. Republican senator marco rubio says he has, quote, serious concerns here. Senator john mccain also saying hes concerned. And nancy pelosi going further, casting tillersons attitude towards the kremlin as downright warm and cozy. Coziness with Vladimir Putin is very alarming and should have been eliminated him, frankly. Now, like any top federal official, tillerson has to sell his reported 218 million stake in exxon if he is confirmed. But many are asking if he can cut all the other ties to insure that he minds only u. S. Interests, not those of his former employer. And this is no theoretical issue, considering that trump has already discussed backing warmer relations with p
several presidential campaigns. and we should note he ran for that top dnc job back in 2005. so starting on that point, donny, this is something that people don t think about much until you get a chair, and then that becomes a somewhat famous person. the primary was full of discussions of debbie wasserman schultz. walk us through how this works and does it matter who wins this intramural battle? there are 440 members, about 440 members of the democratic national committee. so this actually ends up being a lot like running for student body president as opposed to some bigger national office. it does have national implications, though, especially when the democrats don t are the white house. when the democrats have the white house, like the past eight years with president obama, they choose the chair and the chair really answers to the white house at the end of the day. without a white house, the democratic national chair becomes very, very central. they are responsible for message and
and a top obama democrat throwing his name into the ring. this is new. labor secretary tom perez is planning to announce a run. this is the closest thing to a white house pick. the new york times reporting that while obama may not offer a full endorsement, perez will have the impromptu of the president. congressman keith ellison and state party chairs jamie harrison and ray buckley. you know they re not big insiders, because you may not have heard of all of them. the candidates are reflecting all kinds of different visions for the decisions that face the party. from geography, to ideology, to asserting the relevance of political parties at all. when you think about it, we just had a campaign where two of the leading candidates, sanders and trump, proudly ran against all party politics, as usual. joining me now, two politicos who know a thing or two about this. liz smith, democratic strategist, who worked on martin o mall o malley s campaign last year, and donny fowler who s worked on
that means things like the voter file, the database of all voters, for communications in press, for working with and building state parties, all 50 state parties, hopefully. so, it becomes very, very important who the dnc chair is. even though, only about 444 people will elect him or maybe her, in a couple of months. liz, you re noting your head. yeah, it is very important. and to donny s point, in 2000, after the 2000 loss, after the 2004 loss, we saw terry mcauliffe and howard dean take on very outsized roles, both in building up the party s database and in being outspoken, you know, advocates against the bush agenda. and we have a lot of lessons to learn from 2016, as you know. i have very strong opinions on it. because i think that debbie wasserman schultz committed political malpractice and she did things that were very harmful to the party. and we can learn from what went wrong going forward. one, we need a full-time chair.
you know, a lot of her time was spent, i think, focusing on what was best for her and her district. you know, she did this hem-haw on the iran vote, which was not particularly helpful to the president. she was not independent. to use the term of art these days, you might say she had a conflict of interest. yes, she did. and we know that she let the clinton campaign dictate to her what the debate schedule was going to be. and it ended up being an unmitigated disaster, because she allowed republicans to have months and months of these widely televised events, while democratic debates were hidden on christmas eve, and you know, in the dark of night. so, look, we need to do exactly the opposite of that. find someone who s independent, find someone who will be a full-time chair, and find someone who has some experience in party building, which she didn t have going into this. and donny, when you look at what some of the elected and elites in the party are saying, there isn t a real re