President Trump To Tillerson, You’re FIRED After Landing From Africa Trip

President Donald Trump fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday without warning him and replaced his Chief Diplomat with the nation’s top spymaster, CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The public dismissal of Tillerson which came through a Twitter announcement comes after a series of growing rifts between the President and his top diplomat on policy issues relating to Russia, North Korea and Iran.

And in replacing the position of the nation’s top spy, President Trump made another historic move by appointing the first woman to lead the CIA for the first time in history, Gina Haspel, a career intelligence official who is currently the Deputy Director of the CIA.

“Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA will become our new Secretary of State.  He will do a fantastic job!” read a tweet from the President.

For a White House known for its unprecedented leaks, Tillerson’s firing on Friday was a well-guarded secret that managed to be kept under wraps for the entire weekend without a word leaked until today, an announcement that caught everyone off-guard including Tillerson himself who had just landed in Washington from a foreign trip in Africa which he also cut short by a day.

“We got along actually quite well but we disagreed on things. When you look at the Iran deal: I think it’s terrible, I guess he thinks it was OK. I wanted to break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently.

“So, we were not thinking the same,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn on his way to California.

He told reporters that although he and Tillerson had spoken about his departure “for a long time,” he, pointed out that he “made the decision by myself.”

“I think Rex will be much happier now,” he declared.

President Trump also pointed out that the two “disagreed on things,” a reference to Barack Obama’s disastrous Nuclear Deal with Iran and on North Korea, something which Tillerson did publicly including on foreign soil.

Speaking about the designate Secretary of State, now former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Trump said, “We were not really thinking the same. With Mike, we have a very similar thought process. I think it’s going to go very well.

“He has tremendous energy, tremendous intellect, we’re always on the same wavelength. The relationship has been very good,” he added.

One official said President Trump wanted Pompeo to be in place before the highly-anticipated meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the intense trade negotiations.

The divide between the now-fired top diplomat Tillerson and his boss became evident last week after Trump accepted an invitation to meet with Jong Un in May.  He appeared to be out of the loop as he once again condemned his boss’s decision on foreign soil, in Africa.

President Trump thanked his outgoing Secretary of State saying, “Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service!”

He also had words of praise for Tillerson pointing out that, “A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well,” he said.

Trump said Pompeo “graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the U.S. Army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.”

President Trump then spoke of the CIA Deputy Director’s move to her new position as “a historic milestone,” adding that “Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!”

Haspel is a career officer who was a longtime clandestine officer.

Rex Tillerson was never a fan of the President whom he often publicly disagreed with, breaking all tradition of never to disagree with your boss in public let alone on foreign soil.

There is a belief that aloof Tillerson who had little communication with the President Trump is a relic of the GOP (Republican) establishment closely aligned with the Bushes and Never Trumpers than with his boss or his agenda which he was supposed to champion abroad.

His abrupt dismissal which may have shocked many in the establishment and the media will not be a surprise to many who had been wondering why he hadn’t been fired already considering his obvious disdain for the man whom he served and called names, President Trump.

The biggest straw could have been the unilateral statement on Russia issued on Monday by Tillerson without the sanctioning of neither the White House nor the President in which he backed British Prime Minister Theresa May.

A harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, Tillerson, condemned Russia over the dual poisoning in UK of an ex-Russian spy and her daughter saying the poison “clearly came from Russia” vowing to respond after Prime Minister May pointed her finger toward Moscow.

He slammed Russia as an “irresponsible force of instability in the world” giving the British government his backing, adding that, “We have full confidence in the UK’s investigation and its assessment that Russia was likely responsible for the nerve agent attack that took place in Salisbury last week.”

The White House later released a statement that it has also fired a top aide to the Secretary of State for issuing a contradictory statement on the accounts of his boss, Rex Tillerson’s firings.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2018 Manyika Review.  A Rights Reserved.