‘ROCK’ BOTTOM
Trump attacks Tillerson as ‘dumb’ after Rex calls Prez ‘undisciplined’
A hawkish President Trump finally declared war Friday — on his former secretary of state.
The commander-in-chief pulled out the big guns, crudely denouncing the man he once picked to push his foreign policy agenda on the world stage as “dumb as a rock.”
The primary-school putdown came in response to remarks by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who described Trump as “undisciplined” in an interview with CBS News.
Tillerson told CBS' Bob Schieffer that his former boss didn't like to read briefing reports, or deal with the details even at the risk of taking actions that were illegal.
“So often the President would say, ‘Here's what I want to do and here's how I want to do it,' and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do but you can't do it that way. It violates the law, it violates a treaty.' You know, he got really frustrated,” Tillerson said.
“I think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him, ‘You can't do that, and let's talk about what we can do.' ”
Trump fired Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, and replaced him with Mike Pompeo, who had been running the CIA.
“Mike Pompeo is doing a great job,” Trump tweeted Friday, “I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn't have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn't get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!”
The fired secretary of state ticked Trump off after an appearance at a Houston fundraiser Thursday night for the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he offered a rare glimpse inside his short tenure at the White House.
Tillerson speculated that their “starkly different styles” and the fact that they “did not have a common value system” contributed to his dismissal earlier this year, the Houston Chronicle reported. Their differences made communicating a challenge, Tillerson noted, adding he did not know how to conduct himself with the President except in a “really straightforward fashion.”
Tillerson, who once reportedly called Trump a “moron,” did not rise to such name-calling — which he has denied ever occurred — dur-
ing his Texas appearance, but didn't paint the most flattering picture of his time with the administration.
“It was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil Corporation… to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't like to read briefing reports, doesn't like to get the details of a lot of things,” he continued. “But rather just kind of says, ‘Look this is what I believe and you can try to convince me otherwise,' but most of the time you're not going to do that.”
Tillerson also said he believes Trump primarily acts on instincts when making decisions from the White House.
"In some respects it looks like impulsiveness… But… it's not his intent to act on impulse,” he said. "I think he really is trying to act on his instincts.”
Trump sang an entirely different tune about Tillerson when he selected the CEO to join his team in 2016 shortly after his election win.
“I have chosen one of the truly great business leaders of the world, Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, to be Secretary of State,” Trump touted at the time.
But Tillerson was quickly demoted to Trump's “dumb as a rock” club, joining such belittled luminaries as broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, CNN's Don Lemon.and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“The last thing our country needs is another BUSH!,” Trump tweeted in 2015 at the height of the presidential campaign. “Dumb as a rock!”
Tillerson attributed Trump's win to his use of Twitter, a mode of communication that hasn't scored points with Tillerson.
“I will be honest with you, it troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues that they are satisfied with a 128 characters,” he said. “I don't want this to come across as a criticism of him. It's really a concern that I have about us as Americans and us as a society and us as citizens.”
Tillerson also said that “there's no question” Russia intervened in the 2106 presidential race.
“What Russia wants to do is undermine the world's confidence in us. Many people talk about playing chess. He plays three-dimensional chess,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Despite his tenuous relationship with Trump, Tillerson said he was proud of the work he did in government and that he would return if the President wants him back.