who is the person who tried to break the news gently to him, but there was a sense of inef that billty to the change and if he can t speak for his boss, for the president, he s weakened. the secretary of state s job is to represent the president so that was really a dysfunctional situation. whether mike pompeo who obviously to quote president trump is on the same wave length, just the two of them look at the world the same way, whether he ll be a more effective commueffec effectieffec effective communicator, whether he can get the state department deeply depressed agency back on its feet being more creative we ll all be watching that carefully. but probably an inevitable change happened here, but it was done in the cruellest way possible. watching tillerson give that press conference, breathing so
i ve also spoken to white house chief of staff kelly. i will be meeting members of my front office team and policy planning later today to thank them for their service. they have been extraordinarily dedicated to our mission, which includes promoting values that i view as being very important. these two men obviously never clicked. secretary of state rex tillerson and president trump. perhaps the death blow was last week when president trump made the announcement about north korea without informing his secretary of state. in fact, a few hours before the president made that announcement secretary tillerson said we re a long way from negotiations with north korea. there s the policy side of it but i m told as well there s a deep personal element to this that the president never got past. secretary of state tillerson himself never denied the moron comments. the spokes person said it wasn t true but tillerson when asked
by the bush administration but orders that had a bipartisan support in the years after 9/11. right. and actually i wanted to take it to the secretary, though, on pompeo, because, yes, it does look like he will be confirmed but at the same time that doesn t mean that his hearing will be a cake walk. one of the things that tillerson said when he left, he went to the back of the plane and he really lowered the boom on russia. he was trying to put out a warning flair. this comes a day after this president was refusing to come down on russia for the nerve agent attacks. so what do we need to know from pompeo about his stance on russia? because as c.i.a. director, he did say that he believed our intelligence agencies, but we don t know what his position is, for instance, on what the punishment should be. right. having been through three senate confirmation hearings, i can tell you it s an exercise in do no harm. you do your best to get through it without revealing too much
to have somebody in whom he has confidence, especially as he heads into a very sensitive negotiation with north korea. i think there s little argument about that. mike pompeo can fix a lot of the things that went wrong for tillerson simply by hiring some ambassadors, communicating better. what troubles people is the gratuitous cruelty and humiliation of the way rex tillerson, distinguished person who has tried hard to serve the country, the way in which he was treated. you could see as he came to the podium breathing heavily, under the strain of this extraordinary treatment where he lands, he reads by twitter he s been fired. the president doesn t call him for three hours to tell him personally that that s happened to him. it s just extraordinary. but i think at the state department there s likely to be a feeling, okay, things haven t worked out well with the secretary tillerson, as decent a person he is, let s try to move
the middle of the night. two sources tell the washington post the president was so eager to fire tillerson that he wanted to do so in a tweet on friday, but kelly persuaded trump to wait until his secretary of state was back in the united states. kelly had also warned tillerson to possibly expect a tweet from trump over the weekend, a state department official said. what makes this okay that he was warned that he s going to be fired on twitter? no. tillerson failed to fully understand that the chief of staff was gently signaling to him that he was about to be fired. good lord. tillerson cut his trip short citing lack of sleep and a phone call that had kept him awake. four hours after he landed in washington the president announced cia director mike pompeo as his replacement and thanked tillerson for his service. state department had tillerson