bureau chief phil rucker, david ignatius, gardner harris, who was just on the plane with rex tillerson coming back early this morning from africa and on that whole seven-day trip, and nbc national political reporter carol lee. phil, let s go first to you. you and your team broke the story. the surprising announcement today that despite all their tensions for more than a year, that rex tillerson was fired on twitter. yeah. well, andrea, it s interesting, there seems to be some conflicting information, because the white house is telling us that chief of staff john kelly actually called tillerson overnight in the wee hours saturday in africa, woke him up from his sleep to tell him that, you know, his job was in jeopardy, he ought to get back to washington right away. we are still trying to sort out exactly what that conversation was about but tillerson, if he didn t know until this morning he was going to be fired
humiliated in 20 different ways, but i think the fact that he didn t take command of his own bureaucracy and mobilize it, the reason that secretary mattis is so powerful in his interactions with the white house is he s got the pentagon, military, behind him. tillerson never understood he had to have the foreign service behind him. it serves the country, it also serves him as a powerful figure. people around the world knew that rex tillerson did not speak for this president and that s a problem. we have an all-star cast throughout this program. thank you all for launching us. also, we understand that there have been two more firings, not only the chief of staff but gardner harris, we also understand steve goldstein, the undersecretary for public affairs, who had only come on board in december, has also just been fired as well. cleaning house at the state department for those who are left. we have to leave it there. this is an extraordinary day even for this administration.
definitively, he at least should have had some indication that this was coming, that things were not going well in the relationship with the president. gardner harris, you were on the plane with rex tillerson, who had an unusually we thought candid briefing, extraordinary briefing, on the flight between n nigeria and refueling in cape verde. we got the transcript from you and your colleagues, our colleague, abigail williams, the pool producer on all of that. his state of mind as he talked to you very openly about being the point person setting up the upcoming korea talks. he did. look, phil and i are getting the same information. the white house people are sort of telling us look, kelly called him, kelly gave him a heads-up. the state department people are telling us tillerson didn t really get that message. i think what we are hearing kelly told him is you are going to get a tweet, but you know, there s a lot of people in this
we still don t know. and i m not talking about some other moneys they got in a counter isis supplemental. there s another $20 million they haven t spent. the remarkable thing is that the state department and the trump administration at large, as you ve talked about, have really done almost nothing to counter russian meddling in the 2018 midterm elections, and also russian meddling in elections across the west. remember, there s a whole series of elections going on in eastern europe and in central europe over this next year that the russians, we know, are worried about. gardner harris, reporter from the new york times. thank you for talking to me about this. this is something i have an a lot of interest in and very little knowledge on it. i d be happy if you come back and talk to us about this again in the future. would love to, rachel.
money for this year either. it s $120 million sitting there. not one of the 23 analysts working in the department s global engagement center which has been tasked with russia s meddling campaign, and not one of them speaks russia. here s the state department saying here are the tools and the money to do it, and they have responded by no thanks for over a year. is this normal? joining us now is gardner harris, reporter for the new york times, covering the state department and diplomacy. mr. gardner congratulations on this scoop. thanks for joining us to talk about it. glad to be here rachel. i m not well versed in interagency fighting around the foreign service and the pentagon and broader issues within the state department. is it possible this is a normal policy dispute where this money s just been hung up because of normal bickering or