Trump set to dump Tillerson
UNITED STATES: The White House plans to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, according to administration sources.
He could depart within weeks, they said yesterday.
His potential replacement is a former Republican congressman who has forged a rapport with President Donald Trump at his daily intelligence briefings. He would, in turn, be replaced at the CIA by Tom Cotton, a former army officer.
Both Pompeo and Cotton have advocated a tougher US stance on Iran and have reputations for personal loyalty to Trump. Cotton, in particular, has carved out hardline positions on immigration and criminal justice and has supported plans to build a wall on the US southern border.
He has floated the idea of bombing Iran and said last month that if Kim Jong Un’s regime collapsed, China could easily deal with any influx of North Korean refugees by using tanks and machineguns.
It is an open secret that Tillerson has struggled to forge a bond with Trump. Speculation over his departure has spawned the term ‘‘Rexit’’.
Trump, asked yesterday if he wanted Tillerson to remain in his job, offered an elliptical response. ‘‘He’s here. Rex is here,’’ he said.
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Tillerson’s closest ally in the administration, simply brushed off the report. ‘‘There’s nothing to it,’’ he said when asked.
But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t deny it. She did suggest that no move was imminent, saying Trump and Tillerson planned to ‘‘work together to close out what we’ve seen to be an incredible year’’.
Does the president still have confidence in Tillerson? ‘‘When the president loses confidence in someone, they will no longer serve in the capacity that they’re in,’’ she said.
Friction between Trump and the nation’s top diplomat has grown increasingly public through the year. After a report last month that Tillerson had called the president a ‘‘moron’’, Tillerson was forced to appear before cameras at the State Department to pledge fealty his boss. Soon after, Trump publicly challenged his secretary to an IQ match.
For Tillerson, who left his job as Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, a premature departure has seemed increasingly inevitable.
‘‘There’s been a Tillerson death watch since the spring,’’ said Derek Chollet, a former State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council official in the Obama administration.
The plan to replace Tillerson with Pompeo is said to have been developed by John Kelly, the White House chief of staff.
After less than a year in office Trump has parted company with a national security adviser, a chief of staff, an FBI director, a health secretary, three White House communications chiefs, an acting attorney-general and a press secretary.
Separately, Trump got a boost when John McCain, the veteran Arizona senator, said he would support a looming tax-cut bill. McCain was one of several Republicans thought to be wavering on the legislation.
Trump can afford to lose support from no more than two of his party’s senators. – The Times, AP