Trump fires Tillerson, taps Pompeo as next secretary of state
Updated 1502 GMT (2302 HKT) March 13, 2018CNN)President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to succeed him, replacing his top diplomat ahead of a potential high-stakes sitdown between the US President and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Tillerson's
departure follows months of tension between him and Trump. Gina Haspel,
the current CIA deputy director, stands to take over the agency, Trump
tweeted Tuesday morning.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he respected Tillerson's "intellect" and said he "got along well with Rex."
"I think Rex will be much happier now," Trump said.
Tillerson
did not speak to Trump and is unaware of the reason behind his firing,
Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein said.ug
Trump
"thought it was the right time for the transition with the upcoming
North Korea talks and various trade negotiations," a senior
administration official said, adding that Trump asked Tillerson to step
aside on Friday. A senior White House official later clarified that
chief of staff John Kelly told Tillerson that he would be replaced, but
did not specify the timing.
Goldstein said Tillerson was notified of the official termination in Trump's tweet Tuesday morning.
Asked
how Tillerson learned of his dismissal, Trump said Tuesday that "Rex
and I have been talking about this a long time." He specifically
mentioned the Iran nuclear deal as an example of disagreement.
"We were not really thinking the same," Trump said. "With Mike Pompeo, we have a similar thought process."
Trump eyed Pompeo for months
Trump
has wanted Pompeo as his secretary of state for months now, and the
White House began planning for him to take the job last fall, sources
told CNN. Trump told reporters Tuesday that he and Pompeo are "on the
same wavelength" and "the relationship has always been very good and
that is what I need."
Trump's anger at Tillerson after it leaked last year that his secretary of state called him "a moron" never subsided, and many in the White House saw their differences as irreconcilable.
Tillerson
had few, if any, allies in the West Wing. Though Kelly was initially on
his side when he took over, he eventually grew weary of defending him
-- especially after the "moron" remark, which Kelly saw as
insubordination on Tillerson's part.
Sources
close to the President say it was clear Tillerson didn't support Trump.
They say Tillerson wanted to handle foreign policy his own way, without
the President. Trump didn't feel that Tillerson backed him, a source
told CNN.
Trump and his top aides
have spent recent days attempting to quell talk of a White House in
chaos, with the President tweeting earlier this month that there was "no Chaos, only great Energy"
in the White House. But five top Trump administration officials --
ranging from communications professionals to Tillerson -- have resigned
or been fired in the last two weeks.
Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, Trump top economic adviser, resigned from the White House last week after a dispute over new tariffs on steel and aluminum. Hope Hicks, Trump's communications director and longtime confidante, resigned late last month. Trump's longtime personal aide John McEntee was fired and escorted from the White House
on Monday, sources tell CNN. And Josh Raffel, a senior spokesman who
worked extensively with Trump's daughter and senior adviser Ivanka
Trump, left the White House last month.
High-stakes moment
Tillerson's
departure comes just as the Trump administration embarks on its most
difficult and ambitious foreign policy goal to date -- engaging the
nuclear armed North Korean regime. Trump is set to meet Kim by the end
of May.
Tillerson had spearheaded
the maximum pressure campaign that the administration credits with
bringing the North Koreans to the negotiating table, bringing the issue
up in every country meeting he had, no matter how seemingly unrelated.
On
a recent flight back from Africa, Tillerson spoke with reporters off
camera, and seemed almost to lobby for his ability to continue the job.
"I
have a lot of confidence in my ability to create the conditions for
successful negotiations between two very disparate parties," Tillerson
said, adding that he and others were working to prepare Trump to deal
with Kim. "But I'm not the only guy working on this. Others are working
on this as well. We have an obligation to prepare the President for that
meeting and I think there is some ground work we can do ahead of that
that will help with that preparation."
Rocky tenure
It
was a rocky tenure for Tillerson. Since his swearing in on February 1,
2017, Tillerson had to contend with a President who publicly undercut
him as well as tension with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who
effectively ran a shadow State Department on Middle East issues. There
was also competition from US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and a
litany of complaints from diplomats, State Department staff and others
in Washington that he was running a deeply dysfunctional agency.
Tillerson's
cost cutting has lead to the agency's senior tiers "being depleted at a
dizzying speed," and "a decapitation of its leadership ranks," Amb.
Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service
Association (AFSA), a union for US foreign service personnel, wrote in
her group's publication.
"There is
simply no denying the warning signs that point to mounting threats to
our institution -- and to the global leadership that depends on us,"
Stephenson wrote.
Tillerson
aggressively pushed back against such criticisms in a November 28
appearance, portraying it as an insult to State Department staff. "I'm
offended on their behalf when people say somehow we don't have a State
Department that functions," Tillerson said. "I can tell you it's
functioning very well from my perspective."
But
a steady drip of negative news, and reports of Tillerson's alleged
resentment over Ivanka Trump leading a delegation to the Global
Entrepreneurship Summit in India in November, continued to
undermine Tillerson.
undermine Tillerson.
His
ouster was preceded by a painfully public airing of his troubles with
the President, heightened when Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican
who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations committe, faulted Trump for his
tendency to "publicly castrate" the secretary of state. That exchange
forced Tillerson, when asked about the comment by CNN's Jake Tapper, to declare, "I checked. I'm fully intact."
By
that point, in mid-October, an administration official was telling CNN
that Tillerson was on thin ice, even as the President was publicly
declaring he had confidence in his top diplomat.
The
castration episode followed an extraordinary October 4 public statement
in which Tillerson stressed his commitment to his job as secretary of
state, but didn't definitively deny an NBC report that he had called Trump a "moron."
That
report also detailed Tillerson's "fury" about the ways Trump has
undermined him publicly on several foreign policy initiatives and his
thoughts about resigning.
Calling
the story "erroneous" during his remarks, Tillerson pointed the finger
at "some who try to sow dissension" to undermine the President's agenda
and said he has been asked "repeatedly" if he's going to step down.
"For some reason, it continues to be misreported," Tillerson complained. "There's never been a consideration in my mind."
The incident cost Tillerson the support of Kelly, a top White House official told CNN.
Kelly,
a retired four-star Marine general who was once Tillerson's fiercest
defender in the West Wing, stopped defending him privately, fed up with
the moron remark because he saw it as insubordination. As one official
described it, he had grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible.
Even
as Tillerson lost support in the White House, some lawmakers expressed
concern about the prospect of his departure. Many saw Tillerson, along
with Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H. R.
McMaster, as a serious defender of US national security interests, as
opposed to more ideological or inexperienced voices in the White House.
Difficult situation for Tillerson
As
Tillerson exits the national stage, he's seen by some as a man who
tackled a job he hadn't sought with the diligence and dedication prized
by another organization he led, the Boy Scouts of America. Many point to
the fact that he was in a situation that made it very difficult to
succeed.
Tillerson started the job
diverging with Trump on any number of issues, from trade, climate
change, Russian interference in the 2016 election and Iran policy. And
he encountered headwinds from the President who publicly contradicted or
undermined his policies on using diplomacy to defuse tensions with
North Korea, and on resolving a dispute between Gulf allies and a host
of other issues.
Others
have dismissed Tillerson's tenure, saying his business experience
hadn't translated into government leadership and pointing to the
downsized and demoralized State Department he leaves behind, with many
senior diplomatic positions still unfilled.
Critics
from both parties said his proposed cuts of up to 30% were damaging US
interests, with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declaring
in November that the state of the agency was a "national security emergency."
Foreign
envoys also voiced concerns about Tillerson's State Department. In
October, one Washington-based envoy described how ambassadors were
finding ways to either bypass the State Department or develop
work-arounds, because there were no senior officials in place to speak
to or because the usual channels within State no longer worked.
"Technically, the State Department has vanished, has disappeared," the envoy said. "It's totally dysfunctional."
This story is breaking and will be updated.
