the pet did not survive the flight. and what the airline is now saying tonight. good evening. and it s great to have you with us here on a very busy tuesday night. that massive storm hitting at this hour, but first tonight, the storm swirling inside president trump s cabinet. president trump firing secretary of state rex tillerson, and doing so in a tweet. the president firing tillerson, then calling him several hours later from air force one. the president naming cia director mike pompeo as the new secretary of state. and look at the wall tonight. at the top there, tillerson fired. he was not the only one fired at the state department today. the undersecretary of state, steve goldstein, who tweeted that tillerson did not know the firing was coming, he was then fired, too. in addition to all of the vacancies that already exist at the top of the state department. and so, we begin tonight with abc s chief white house correspondent jonathan karl. reporter: president trump is in califo
is whether mike pompeo in lock step in a way that rex tillerson simply wasn t, makes american foreign policy more hawkish on the key issue of iran, potentially, potentially on north korea and it does seem that mike pompeo is more hawkish on russia than rex tillerson, than the president has been recently, so we ll see if that changes too. evelyn? i would say the first thing, ari, is the way this happened is highly unconstructive and it didn t need to come down this way, just suddenly firing tillerson out of the blue means a lot of people around the world are trying to figure out what to do. i spoke to a japanese minister who said his foreign minister is coming to town on friday. if you had a normal process, you would have a phase in, phase out, and you could deal with problems like that much more quickly and rationally. and the other thing, of course, is for the japanese, they re
in fact, just last friday you may recall when trump ousted the health care chief, rex tillerson did make it through this friday evening and wasn t certain as axios reports. trump was seejsing sieging when he returned from his las vegas trip and then saw tillerson s gaffe-covered cable news coverage. the relationship so toxic, few in the white house think it can be rebuilt. trump is considering firing tillerson to give mike pompeo the job. that would leave a vacancy at the cia. but apparently, quote, trump recognizes cabinet shuffle to bring back press. white house chief of staff john kelly wants stability they write an discouraging high level departures before next year. today in puerto rico, vice president mike pence asked by nbc news about his confidence in tillerson. he said, quote, oh sure, and then repeated that phrase when pressed about his confidence in tillerson. so that s the staff drama. then, of course, the trump drama. today reporters asking trump about the bizarre referenc
and i think his comments yesterday only give rise to the idea that this is entirely dysfunctional in every day way, shape and form. ej, ne era is suggesting there s a type of enjoyment in the president keeps everyone in the suspended animation which is especially bizarre when you have the powers of the presidency because by definition everyone is in that suspended animation. the fact that he feels the need to stir it up as we saw and not walk back the comments, what do you make of it? well, i think you said it right earlier on when you were talking about tillerson and the trouble he s in. the president was upset with tillerson because he wanted to save face from tillerson calling him a moron which tillerson himself has not denied. and he worried about not seeing his face, trump, on television instead of tillerson was there instead. and so what you are seeing i think in these poll numbers is a sense from americans that this
star. so much to get to. nira, i give you open season on the gender gap and please speak if you would to this approach to foreign policy, these dramatic comments and the tillerson feud. you know, i actually think these two issues are related. i think they re a lot of women who are fearful. fearful about what the trump administration is doing, fearful about what the trump what donald trump himself is just rattling off at any given time on a weekend. you can be out with your kids and come back home and all of a sudden he seems to have threatened war with north korea. he s seems to be taking joy in the idea that we d all be worried about him having with a war with somebody. i think a lot of women look at this administration and say, it s attacking the issues that they, that we care about. but also that he s completely unstable. and that that is a national security threat. it s an issue of security.