personnel reporting there has been in washington all week long and the president appears to enjoy stoking, what really stands out here is the white house has not really had to answer for at all is that in addition to firing rex tillerson on tuesday morning, later on the day tuesday they went on to fire another senior official from the state department. they fired the guy who put out the statement. the undersecretary of state that put out what we believe is the true statement explaining the realtime line when tillerson was fired, the timeline that says he was fired right after the russia remarks and put as freaking spotlight on this question whether his russia criticism
was fired from trump s tweet on tuesday morning. and that timing ends up being really important because that means the timeline here is not that rex tillerson was a dead man walking and been told he had been fired when he made the strong anti-russia comments and put out the statement on monday night. what this means about the timeline, tillerson made those strong anti-russia comments on monday night and got fired on tuesday morning. surprise. and for some reason the white house has tried to create an alternate timeline of his firing to make it look like he wasn t fired after the strong russia criticism. and that s why for all the palace intrigue, who s up, who s down, merry-go-round reporting that s been happening at the white house that the president enjoys stoking, white house
last public statement from the white house on friday. this was his briefing on monday when he very explicitly said i just got off the phone with boris johnson and it was the russians and very few people have this and we think it likely was the russian government and this is agrenlgous and all the rest. so the russian issue did bother them and obviously iran, he was trying to renegotiate with europeans and fix the deal by toughing it up and trying to get the president from blowing it up when the next deadline takes place in may. there were a lot of policy disagreements. the profound part was they were a mismatch. the chemistry was wrong. steve goldstein was confirmed and came on board in december and was certainly perceived as tillerson s man and while the chief of staff, a very controversial person and her deputy were permitted to resign gracefully later in the day and still at the state department,
steve goldstein had been hired by rex tillerson, confirmed and came on board in december and was certainly perceived as tillerson s man. and while the chief of staff, a very controversial person and her deputy were permitted to resign gracefully later in the day and still at the state department, helping till areson close up shop by march 31st, goldstein was dismissed. and just to underscore what you just said about goldstein specifically, from your reporting and from everything we understand about these circumstances, the white house says, admits to nbc news that goldstein was fired for this statement. the statement does contradict what the white house said about
state was being fired, you saw him explain to reporters there, rex and i have been talking about this for a long time. rex and i have been talking about this for a long time. that story directly from the president that morphed into a different but related account from anonymous white house officials that told reporters that rex tillerson s firing didn t come up suddenly on tuesday. it was no surprise. there was nothing that suddenly occasioned it tuesday morning. in fact, white house officials told reporters, rex tillerson had been notified on friday that he was fired or maybe he had been notified on saturday that he had been fired. in any case, the white house chief of staff definitely called him days in advance and told him he was fired. turns out that s not true. as best as we can tell, rex tillerson hadn t been told on friday he was fired. he hadn t been told on saturday he was fired.