‘You’re fired’: Rex Tillerson’s Last Week Symbolic Of Rocky Partnership With Donald Trump

The turmoil in White House staff shows no sign of abating as U.S. President has fired his Secretary of State (equivalent to India’s Foreign Minister) Rex Tillerson. Along with Tillerson, Trump has also let go of the state department’s second most senior staff member and Tillerson aide Steve Goldstein.

What is indeed shocking about Tillerson’s discharge is that he came to know about the President’s decision after his personal assistant read out Trump’s tweet to him on Tuesday morning. Steve Goldstein confirmed the sequence of events to the press which apparently led to the decision of him being fired too.

The White House’s official stance though is that Tillerson had been intimated of the president’s decision to replace him through chief of staff John Kelly on Friday. Tillerson had reportedly been told that he would be replaced, but not the timing.

Donald Trump spoke to reporters about his decision, “Rex and I have been talking about this a long time…We were not really thinking the same…I actually got along well with Rex. But really it was a different mindset. It was a different thinking," Trump told reporters at the White House. Trump said. "With Mike Pompeo, we have a similar thought process." Mike Pompeo, the Chief of Central Intelligence Agency has been appointed the new Secretary of State.

The manner in which Rex Tillerson has been let go is symbolic of the awkward relationship that the President and the secretary of State shared since the time Trump chose him over other candidates like New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Rex Tillerson before agreeing to join the White House staff was CEO of the global oil giant Exxon-Mobil. Tillerson’s appointment brought a globe-trotting executive to Washington to work for an inexperienced politician who had become president.

Trouble first started when Tillerson was promised by the President the freedom to pick his own staff but he saw that his attempts to bring in people were being sabotaged. One of the first signs of his exclusion from the core team of decision makers on foreign policy came when he was not consulted on the White House’s original proposed travel ban or on expanding the so-called “Mexico City policy,” which bars foreign organizations that receive U.S. aid from providing abortion services, officials said. Control over major diplomatic priorities was also muddled, with Jared Kushner, the president’s 37-year-old son-in-law and senior adviser, being given the lead on Middle East peace talks.

One of the biggest points of divergence between Trump and Tillerson was over the multilateral nuclear deal signed with Iran in 2015, which imposed strict curbs on the Iranian nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. Tillerson had consistently advocated remaining in step with European allies in abiding by the deal. Trump must sign a waiver on sanctions in mid-May for the U.S. to stay within the agreement. He has signalled he will not do so, and openly expressed his frustration that Tillerson had persuaded him to sign earlier waivers.

Rumors that Tillerson had lost favour with Trump began to circulate last summer and intensified over the fall when he was quoted as calling the president a “moron.” Trump had also tweeted out about the futility of talks with North Korea while Tillerson was in South Korea on a diplomatic trip. The two men’s relationship appeared to improve on the Asia trip in early November but Trump, however, continued to complain privately about Tillerson, people familiar with the discussions said, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

This week saw Tillerson further sidelined as Trump made the decision to meet North Korea’s President Kim Jong-un without consulting his secretary of state. In perhaps the final straw for this relationship, Tillerson backed UK’s stand on the poisoning of former Russian mole Sergei Skripal which blamed the attack on Russia whereas White House had refrained from blaming Moscow.

Tillerson was the epitome of the corporate elite that had always spurned the brash Trump, just like Gary Cohn, the top economic adviser and former Goldman Sachs titan who left last week after Trump defied his advice and signed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

That's ominous for other subordinates who have been at odds with the President. Speculation is simmering about the fates of officials including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 14, 2018 06:24 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).