i ll be honest, this is a very surprising choice, somebody very much outside the diplomatic community and somebody who s frankly going to be bringing a great deal of baggage into this position. i think it s fascinating these reports he ll be paired with john bolton. john bolton is very aggressive and very very outspoken. it will be interesting to see how that particular marriage will work. i will move on quickly, i m picturing double box, as we sane the news business, with a picture of mitt romney and rex tillerson, they re just so different, i m baffled. it is. we will find out, i suppose, over the next couple of weeks, what attracted donald trump to this particular choice. obviously, this is the choice that would be most favored by the kremlin, by cell phovladimi
confirmed donald trump met with rex tiller son at the trump tower today and heard from sources close to the team that rex tillerson is indeed the choice for secretary of state. the news caps off a week of cabinet picks including oklahoma general scott pruitt. you recently wrote this pick is basically going to bring a face jo between the two sides of the kilometer divide. how so? well, scott pruitt has been suing the environmental protection agency he s been called to lead regularly over the past several years and several of those are over the issue of climate change. they sued over the obama plan to cut power plants and the epa over methane, another powerful
extraordinary timing. whenever we have this story with the cis believing russia was trying to influence the election and with the appointment of a man who has received an honor from vladimir putin, not that automatically is disqualifying but certainly i think that will add to the pushback that mr. tillerson is likely to receive. i was just about to ask you. give me the buzz on the hill. are these going to be ugly confirmation hearings? i think the democrats have to oppose a lot of these nominees and not just because they re sincerely opposed but because the liberal base demands that of them. having said that, the democrats don t really have the numbers for the most part. they would need to peel off some republicans to join them in opposition to these nominees. so far, that appears fairly unlikely to happen, but of course we can t rule anything out in this climate. i want to get back to reports on russia intervening in our
and i hope it makes sense. you have so much experience here, i think the challenge is when you have breaking news like this, there are a lot of people who watch our programming and they re in the weeds, in the ins and outs and tell you about ceo rex tillerson and tell you why he would be a great secretary of state or wouldn t be. a lot of people want to hear breaking news and come to us and turn on nbc and thmsnbc and the filter. it depends on the filter what type of reaction you get, as best you can for people tuning into this news and people just finding out about rex tiller son, what s your take what he would bring to this role? reporter: it s really hard to say. we don t know as much about him as we would know as someone who has come up through the role of diplomacy or public policy mitt romney, let s say. this is someone who is coming from the outside, bringing a
nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent, andrea mitchell, thank you for joining us for this breaking news for the president-elect s choice of secretary of state. thank you. reporter: you bet. let s bring in our contributor, michael, also former ambassador to russia. are you comfortable with this pick? no, not really, to be honest. i want to look more closely at it. it s breaking news. i thought we were going to talk about russian hacking and now to rex tillerson. welcome to the news. yes. let me say a few things. the main reason i am uncomfortable is that the secretary of state is a multi-dimensional policy job. it s not just an energy job. you have to deal with the military issues, you have to deal with diplomacy about trade issues, you have to deal on a myriad of issues, human rights, for instance, whereas the increasing sector, i ve dealt