On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that he had fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who would now be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Tillerson was informed of his sacking while on a State Department tour of Africa.
Trump then tweeted out that he would be nominating Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo as his new CIA director. If confirmed, Haspel would be the first woman ever to serve at the helm of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018
Trump’s unorthodox move to rob the CIA chair and insert Pompeo into Secretary of State is almost unprecedented, and resembles a UK-style cabinet reshuffle.
Apparently, irreconcilable differences got the best of Trump and Tillerson, as the two clashed on both substance and style, with each accusing the other of undermining their efforts to implement foreign policy.
from the Christian Science Monitor explains:
“In the end, Rex Tillerson was simply not enough of a disruptor to last as President Trump’s secretary of State. Time and again over the course of Mr. Trump’s first year in office, his chief diplomat sounded a cautious and conventional note on foreign policy matters that the president had chosen as issues on which he could stand apart from the traditional approach to American statecraft.”
Speculation is rife throughout the Beltway as to why Trump fired Tillerson, but with so many possible motives and rumors floating around, it’s almost impossible to narrow the dismissal to a single incident. The two appeared to be in stark disagreement on Iran, North Korea, Syria, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian.
Moreover, it has been said that Tillerson had begged Trump not to relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem for fear it could damage an already tenuous Middle East diplomatic portfolio. Others say that is was Tillerson’s penchant for diplomacy over sabre rattling which irked his boss the most, as Trump may have regarded Tillerson’s careful and methodical relationship-building approach as projecting weakness to US allies and foes alike.
READ MORE TILLERSON NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Tillerson Files
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