Rex Tillerson Debates Quitting After ‘Unprofessional’ Trump Bashes Jeff Sessions
July 24, 2017
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is growing increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration and could quit before the year is through, according to reports.
Two sources familiar with Tillerson’s conversations with friends
told CNN over the weekend that he has grown so frustrated with President Donald Trump and his administration that there may soon be a “Rexit.”
The change in Tillerson’s tone followed a stressful week for the secretary of state. He was found to have violated U.S. sanctions against Russia while working as CEO of Exxon Mobil. Also, Trump publicly assailed one of Tillerson’s fellow Cabinet members, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, saying he regretted hiring him.
Tillerson, the sources said, viewed Trump’s comments as unprofessional.
Early Monday,
Trump again attacked Sessions on Twitter, calling him “beleaguered” and wondering aloud why he wasn’t investigating Trump’s campaign rival Hillary Clinton.
Before last week, Tillerson had strongly maintained he would see through his task of reorganizing the entire State Department after Trump’s March budget proposal laid out plans to cut $10 billion from its roughly $47 billion in funding. But that resolve seems to have dimmed.
The sources acknowledged that Tillerson could have been venting after a tough week, but his frustration is just the latest in a long list of times he has butted heads with the president and his administration.
Last month, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was the one calling Tillerson “unprofessional.” The secretary of state reportedly blew up at top Trump administration staffers during a meeting in White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s office.
Four people familiar with the details of the meeting described the heated
exchange to Politico. During his tirade, Tillerson quarreled with the director of presidential personnel, Johnny DeStefano, and made clear he didn’t want the White House to “have any role in staffing.”
Tillerson has been frustrated after Trump and the White House rejected a number of his hiring decisions. Early this year, Trump vetoed Tillerson’s plan to hire Elliott Abrams as his second in command because Abrams was critical of Trump and his policy positions during the 2016 campaign.
Early this year, Tillerson was also left scrambling, along with other Cabinet members, in doing damage control after the administration implemented a ban on foreign travel to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority nations. The Cabinet was not consulted beforehand. The move gathered serious legal pushback and is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall.
In late June, the White House also failed to coordinate with the State Department when it issued a warning to the Syrian regime about using chemical weapons. Such warnings are usually issued through, or at least coordinated with, the State Department.
Trump has also contradicted and overruled Tillerson's public statements about whether the
U.S. should mediate in a dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Both sources said that Tillerson’s frustrations with these situations, and many other tug-of-wars between the White House and Cabinet members, are increasing noticeably and that he has come to realize things won’t change anytime soon.
Hmmmm: Rex Tillerson Is Taking A Little Time Off, Says State Department
July 25, 2017
Nothing wrong with a hard-working diplomat recharging via some down time away from the office, but it’s impossible not to notice that this “time off” is happening while rumors are swirling that Tillerson may be on his way out at State.
Is that “a little time off” as in vacation or “a little time off” as in a trial separation? A cabinet official who spoke to
Erick Erickson confirmed the reports that Tillerson is pissed off at how Trump has treated Jeff Sessions. Yesterday, before Trump escalated the Sessions-bashing on Twitter this morning,
CNN cited sources claiming that T-Rex had intended to stay a full year at State but was rethinking that given his manifold frustrations with the White House, just the latest of which is the Sessions matter:
Tillerson has a growing list of differences with the White House, including a new debate over Iran policy and personnel. His frustration is hardly a secret and it has spilled out publicly at times. But friends sense a change of late…
Both of these sources are familiar with Tillerson conversations with friends outside Washington. Both said there was a noticeable increase in the secretary’s frustration and his doubts that the tug-of-war with the White House would subside anytime soon. They also acknowledged it could have been venting after a tough week, a suggestion several DC-based sources made when asked if they saw evidence Tillerson was looking for an exit strategy.
News broke last week that Tillerson had to close the State Department’s
war-crimes office. Since then it’s been revealed that he’s closing the Department’s
office for the coordination of cyber issues as well. The Free Beacon describes the relationship between the White House and State at the moment as one of
“open war”:
The State Department is said to be in a state of “massive dysfunction,” with top officials working under Tillerson ignoring White House directives on critical staffing issues and key policy matters, according to multiple sources, including administration allies who are said to be increasingly frustrated with what is perceived as the White House’s inability to control its own federal agencies.
The tensions have fueled an outstanding power battle between the West Wing and State Department that has handicapped the administration and resulted in scores of open positions failing to be filled with Trump confidantes. This has allowed former Obama administration appointees still at the State Department to continue running the show and formulating policy, where they have increasingly clashed with the White House’s own agenda…
“Foggy Bottom is still run by the same people who designed and implemented Obama’s Middle East agenda,” the source said. “Tillerson was supposed to clean house, but he left half of them in place and he hid the other half in powerful positions all over the building. These are career staffers committed to preventing Trump from reversing what they created.”
That’s a hell of a time for the man in charge to take a vacation but a quite logical time for him to undertake a trial separation. It could be that he’s weighing whether to resign, knowing that that would drive an already chaotic administration even deeper into chaos with Priebus, Sessions, and McMaster all potentially out the door as well sooner rather than later. Or maybe … Tillerson’s already resigned and the White House asked him to keep it quiet for a few days as they plot when and how to reveal it? If T-Rex really does (or has) quit, I think that all but assures that Trump won’t fire Sessions. Losing one major cabinet member six months in is embarrassing; losing two in a very short span would be a total clusterfark.
Sessions To Possibly Be Replaced As AG
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