1. #14626
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    Quote Originally Posted by AntRobertson View Post
    LULZ, that’s how far Trumptards have lowered the bar now...

    Trump gets credit for deescalating a situation he’d escalated in the first place based on a meeting that hasn’t even occurred yet.
    maher has a good take on this:

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...ight_work.html

    Maher Trashes Liberal Response To Trump North Korea Meeting: "F*ck You," "It Just Might Work"


    "I'm sure that a lot of people weren't thinking that is what I was going to say about Trump and North Korea because, you know, we live in this tribal world where everything has to be either the 'blue team' or the 'red team,'" Maher began.

    "If you hate Trump so much -- I do -- this might even be happening because of Donald Trump. Because of his tough talk. It could be because of the sanctions. It could have been because of the Olympics," he said.

    He reminded the left that candidate Obama proposed this exact type of meeting "and they loved it." Then he said, "f*ck you," you don't live on the west coast where a nuclear weapon would hit f
    ast.

    He also knocked the 'no president has ever done this' and 'Well, we'll just be giving Kim the respect he and his family has always craved' arguments.


    "Yeah, and they all failed," he said of prior presidents' handling of the North Korea situation. "So I'm going to file this one under, 'so crazy it just might work.'"

    "I just want to read Obama's quote from 2008 and remind people where he was because he was asked in a debate if he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, without preconditions. And he said I would," Maher said before reading the quote.

    :

    "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration (Bush administration) -- is ridiculous."

    "And Hillary cackled. And the State Department tut-tutted and everybody said bad. But the base loved it. And he won the primary. And it may have helped him win the general election. And if was good enough for him I think it's good enough now," Maher said.

  2. #14627
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  3. #14628
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Earl View Post
    Snub baby cakes, you obvious are having serious issue thinking for youself.

    MSM simply feeds you opinion disguised as news.
    You've got to be kidding right.
    Have you noticed fox hasn't mentioned a word about the Stormy Daniels issue.
    While it may well be a "so what , big deal" thing it's still news.

  4. #14629
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    More carnival barking bullshit from baldy orange cunto.

    WASHINGTON—U.S. President Donald Trump took another shot at Canada’s trade practices Saturday, alleging that Canadian leaders have taken advantage of bumbling American politicians “for decades.”

    “Canada’s brutal. Canada’s really tough,” Trump said during a rambling speech on behalf of a Republican candidate, Rick Saccone, who is running in Tuesday’s hotly contested special House of Representatives election in western Pennsylvania.

    “We have a big deficit with Canada, too,” Trump continued, though his own Council of Economic Advisers acknowledged in its recent annual report that, as Canadian officials have repeatedly said, the U.S. actually has a trade surplus with Canada.
    https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...rump-says.html

  5. #14630
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    You've got to be kidding right.
    Have you noticed fox hasn't mentioned a word about the Stormy Daniels issue.
    While it may well be a "so what , big deal" thing it's still news.

    Tabloid news

  6. #14631
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    which is more likely to happen?

    60 minutes airs the already recorded stormy daniels interview?

    trump and kim jong un actually meet face to face?

  7. #14632
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    Quote Originally Posted by raycarey View Post
    trump and kim jong un actually meet face to face?
    trump will have a very good reason for cancelling.

  8. #14633
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    Quote Originally Posted by raycarey View Post
    ^ is that your TV?

    surprised you're not watching it on RT.
    Surprised that some people are not so narrow sighted as you?

    I too am surprised seeing that - in contrast what the MSM feed us - the "rogue" and "undeveloped" state has also dept stores, with smart phones and electronics, smiling and happy people and many other things, same what we have got also here in our "developed and democratic world", however developed not from the scratch like that "rogue" state...















  9. #14634
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    as everyone's already seen: democrats wish for texas to turn purple were vanished.

    50% more republicans than democrats turned up to the polls.

    because of the who's up in the senate, it's very unlikely dems take control of the senate.

    and if dems are hoping to take back the house, it's looking unlikely when one looks at texas:

    Takeaway from Texas: Expect Republican candidates nationwide to snuggle up to Trump | TheHill

    Takeaway from Texas: Expect Republican candidates nationwide to snuggle up to Trump


    However, fantasies that 2018 would be the year of a reversal in Democratic fortunes were rained on by the fact that more than 1.5 million voters participated in the Republican primary (also an increase, albeit much smaller, since 2014).
    This left Democrats a half-million votes behind the GOP in primary voting,

    President Trump wasn’t on the ballot in Texas, but his presence in the White House cast a large shadow. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune pollconducted in early February found Trump’s job approval was 83 percent positive among Texas Republicans, and 85 percent negative among Democrats. The latest results continue a consistent pattern of polarized partisan views of the president among voters in the state since his election.

  10. #14635
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    A social media post about Trump's education cabinet member Devos by James Wood. This is quite the rant!

    You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas. I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

    You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
    You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselfs in recognition of what they had done.
    I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
    Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
    You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you ckoke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.
    You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.
    And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?
    You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
    On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
    You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.
    You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away.
    I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.
    the only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of your of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.
    You Make Your Own Luck

  11. #14636
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Baldy orange cunto has sacked Tillerson

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    Trump sacks Rex Tillerson as state secretary



    Breaking News ...

    US President Donald Trump has sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, replacing him with the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo.

    Thanking Mr Tillerson for his service on Twitter, Mr Trump said the new state secretary would do "a fantastic job".
    Mr Tillerson, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, was only appointed to the job just over a year ago.
    The president also nominated Gina Haspel to become the first woman director of the CIA

    BBC

    Breaking News ... so please add to the item



    EDIT:- Twitter

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

    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!
    Last edited by David48atTD; 13-03-2018 at 08:45 PM.
    Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago ...


  13. #14638
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    ^ Amazing.....

  14. #14639
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Why not replace the secretary of state with someone who is in the Koch Brothers' pocket?

    Makes perfect sense for this particular administrative swamp.



  15. #14640
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    Sent him to Africa then fired him. Probably cut off his travel account too.

  16. #14641
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    Quote Originally Posted by uncle junior View Post
    Sent him to Africa then fired him. Probably cut off his travel account too.
    Like Comey, will have to ask if he can have a lift back.

    That baldy orange cunto is one obnoxious prick innit. And a fucking coward to boot. Big yellow streak down his back.

  17. #14642
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    Who is Gina Haspel? Trump's pick for CIA chief linked to torture site

    President Donald Trump-gina-haspel-jpg
    Haspel would be the first female director of the agency, but the historic significance is overshadowed by
    her alleged link to the site

    Donald Trump’s pick for head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, reportedly oversaw a
    black site prison in Thailand
    where terrorism suspects were tortured.

    She briefly ran the prison in 2002, anonymous officials told the Associated Press.


    If the US Senate confirms Haspel, she would be the first female director of the agency, but the historic
    significance of her nomination was immediately overshadowed by her reported link to the black site,
    where two suspected al-Qaida members were waterboarded.

    More here @ The Guardian
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails President Donald Trump-gina-haspel-jpg  

  18. #14643
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    Mike Pompeo: who is Trump's new pick for secretary of state?

    President Donald Trump-mike-pompeo-jpg
    The former soldier, congressman, businessman and CIA chief shares the president’s scepticism on Iran and the Paris accord

    Pompeo graduated from both the United States Military Academy at West Point and Harvard and served three terms as a
    representative for Kansas’s fourth district.

    As a member of the House select committee on intelligence, he was an aggressive critic of US foreign policy under the
    Obama administration, particularly regarding the nuclear deal with Iran.

    Trump cited disagreement with Tillerson regarding the Iran deal as a reason for firing the former oil executive.

    Tillerson supported the agreement as the best way to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
    Trump has denounced it as an “embarrassment to the United States” and has threatened to withdraw entirely.

    In 2016, a day before Trump announced that he would nominate Pompeo to lead the CIA, the congressman tweeted:
    “I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”

    Pompeo is also aligned with Trump on climate change, having expressed skepticism about the extent to which
    humans are responsible.

    Pompeo has said the Paris climate accord would be a “costly burden” for the US; last year Trump announced the US would withdraw.
    Tillerson supported the Paris deal and pushed the president to stay.

    More @ The Guardian
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails President Donald Trump-mike-pompeo-jpg  

  19. #14644
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    Quote Originally Posted by David48atTD View Post
    Who is Gina Haspel? Trump's pick for CIA chief linked to torture site
    New CIA chief ran Thailand's secret waterboarding site
    14 Mar 2018


    Gina Haspel, a veteran CIA clandestine officer picked by President Donald Trump on Tuesday to head the Central Intelligence Agency, is a controversial figure, backed by many in the US intelligence community but regarded warily by some in Congress for her involvement in the agency's black-site detention facilities.

    Haspel ran a secret CIA detention facility in Thailand codenamed "Cat's Eye" but better known as Detention Site Green. Two suspected members of the al Qaeda militant group were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques at the facility.

    Three years later, still during Bush's presidency, she helped carry out an order to destroy videotapes of the waterboarding at the Thai site, which simulates drowning and is considered a form of torture, according to those people.

    Such facilities are called "black sites" because their existence is unacknowledged by the US government.

    Every Thai government and army commander since 2002 has denied there every was such a site on Thai territory - which is the point of the very existence of "black sites".

    The exact location of the Cat's Eye site has remained secret despite hundreds of attempts by Thai and foreign media to discover its actual whereabouts.

    "Interesting," tweeted Snowden. "The new CIA Director Haspel, who 'tortured some folks,' probably can't travel to the EU to meet other spy chiefs without facing arrest due to an @ECCHRBerlin complaint to Germany's federal prosecutor," wrote Snowden, referring to a complaint filed by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

    https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/gen...rboarding-site

  20. #14645
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    ^&^^ All great news, Trump will slowly undermine these truly nasty institutions like the CIA and the DOD from the inside out...
    The Donald rules!

  21. #14646
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    Some cheap guesthouses offer free waterboarding

  22. #14647
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Earl View Post
    ^&^^ All great news, Trump will slowly undermine these truly nasty institutions like the CIA and the DOD from the inside out...
    The Donald rules!
    Baldy orange cunto completely undermines US national security and there is Mr. Earl barking like a circus seal with a ball on its nose.

    Who'da thunk it?


  23. #14648
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    Hiring incompetent bozos is all part of the plan.....


  24. #14649
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Baldy orange cunto completely undermines the Deep State and there is Mr. Earl barking like a circus seal with a ball on its nose.

    Who'da thunk it?

    FTFY...

    You never played chess did you Harry!

  25. #14650
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    Rex Tillerson’s last significant act as secretary of state was characteristically out of tune with the White House.

    Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, had avoided any blame of Russia for the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, but minutes later Tillerson issued his own statement, which was definitive in supporting the UK assessment that Moscow was behind the attack.




    It was the sort of statement of unquestioning support for an ally that would be expected in more normal times, and that was the problem. Trump had said privately but repeatedly that he found Tillerson too “traditional”.


    Most longstanding observers had expected there could be a tweeted rebuke from Trump on Tuesday morning, as there had been several times in the past when Tillerson had strayed from the White House line.


    But the dismissal came as a shock nevertheless, at least to state department officials who had accompanied Tillerson on his final foreign tour, to Africa.


    The exit was brutal. Trump phoned Tillerson from Air Force One soon after midday, more than three hours after the tweeted announcement of his firing.


    Tillerson managed only to secure agreement for him to stay on formally until the end of March to oversee a transition.


    State department officials had said earlier that he would leave his post immediately and could not confirm whether he would even return to pack up his belongings. A departure date of 31 March was agreed upon, but he relinquished day-to-day running of the department to his deputy, John Sullivan.


    When he appeared to make his farewell at the lectern in the state department briefing room, he was clearly exhausted and emotional. His voice was on the point of cracking.

    He focused on the selflessness of public service and did not mention the president. He spoke about the values of accountability he had tried to instil in the state department, not the administration’s.




    Tillerson and Trump’s offices even clashed about the circumstances of his departure. The White House said that he had been given a few days’ notice. But a Tillerson spokesman, Steve Goldstein, told reporters it had come as a complete surprise to Tillerson, soon after he landed in Washington at 4am.


    Reporters at the state department were told that Goldstein would provide a briefing. Then Goldstein was said to have been “pulled aside into a meeting”. An hour later the news leaked that he had been summarily fired.


    Tillerson had known over the weekend that yet another battle was brewing. He received a call on Friday from John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, according to the Associated Press, but that was apparently to warn him that there might be a tweet “of concern to him” in the pipeline.


    But the veteran Texan oilman had survived similar battles before, riding out presidential dissatisfaction by marshalling his allies, and affecting a laconic unconcern about the backstabbing ways of Washington.


    When White House officials unleashed a flurry of unattributable press briefings in late November suggesting that Tillerson was on the way out, he held an early morning meeting with James Mattis – the defence secretary and his close ally – and the two of them went for lunch with Trump.


    After that meeting, the president disavowed any intention of getting rid of Tillerson, declaring it “fake news”.


    That incident led to speculation that there was a “suicide pact” among traditional conservatives in the cabinet – including Tillerson, Mattis and possibly the treasury secretary, Stephen Mnuchin – in which they would all threaten to leave if one of them was threatened.


    But if the pact ever existed, it failed to save Tillerson this time – perhaps because he was out of the country and unable to rally resistance. On the last leg of his African tour, he closed himself in his room for a day, claiming sickness, and then announced he would be leaving for home a day earlier than scheduled.


    By the time his plane landed in Washington, it was too late: the execution by tweet followed just a few hours later.


    Within minutes, Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the UN – who had pursued her own hawkish foreign policy in New York without reference to Tillerson or the state department – put out her own tweet. Haley described the reshuffle as a “great decision” and said nothing about Tillerson.



    Nikki Haley

    @nikkihaley
    Congratulations to my friend and soon to be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo! Great decision by the President. 🇺🇸


    9:24 PM - Mar 13, 2018


    Haley’s widest policy divergence from 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.




    By contrast, Haley and Pompeo have unfailingly channelled Trump’s distaste for the deal – which could well be killed off by Tillerson’s departure.


    Trump must sign a waiver on sanctions in mid-May for the US 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.


    Russia was another important source of discord, though one that Trump – under investigation for possible collusion with Moscow – has less reason to advertise.


    The reaction to the nerve agent attack in the UK was just the latest example. Throughout his tenure Tillerson stuck to a tough line on sanctions, insisting that they would not be lifted until Russia changed its behaviour – most importantly in Ukraine.


    Trump, by contrast, has constantly sought ways to relax the sanctions, starting from the first weeks of the administration, before Tillerson’s Senate confirmation,when the White House drafted an executive order relaxing key anti-Moscow measures. It was only stopped by firm resistance from state department staff and allied capitals.


    On North Korea, Trump had humiliated Tillerson by tweeting his lack of confidence of the secretary of state’s diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes. The president told him not to “waste his time”.



    Donald J. Trump

    @realDonaldTrump
    I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...


    10:30 PM - Oct 1, 2017




    And when Saudi Arabia and its Emirati allies imposed a surprise embargo on Qatar in June, Trump immediately took Riyadh’s side while Tillerson and tried to broker a solution.


    Time and again, he was blindsided and sidelined in the Middle East by Trump’s son-in-law and special envoy, Jared Kushner, who is reportedly under scrutiny by Robert Mueller for mixing the interests of his family’s real estate business.


    Tillerson and Trump also grated personally. Trump saw the Texan as staid while Tillerson saw his boss as brash and ill-informed. He reportedly threatened to resign in July after Trump gave a highly politicised speech to the Boy Scouts, an organisation Tillerson used to run.




    After a security briefing on nuclear weapons in the same month, when Trump demanded to know why the US could not restore its arsenal to cold war levels, Tillerson described the president in his absence as a “fucking moron” and the comment got back to Trump.


    When the report surfaced in October, Tillerson did not deny it. Trump appeared to shrug off the insult, bragging he could beat Tillerson in a IQ contest – but it is unlikely it was forgiven.


    Trump and Tillerson never took much time to find out whether they had similar worldviews. Their first meeting in Trump Tower in New York was in December 2016, after Trump’s shock election win.




    Tillerson, the outgoing head of ExxonMobil, thought he was just being asked to give his general views on foreign policy, and was taken aback when the president-elect offered him the top diplomatic job on the spot.


    He later said he was reluctant to take the post, and had been looking forward to retirement, but had been persuaded by his wife.


    Once confirmed, he approached the job as a commercial executive, telling Congress his focus was on the restructuring of the state department.


    The restructuring took the form of a drastic downsizing. The White House proposed a cut amounting to about a quarter of the departmental budget, and Tillerson did little to defend his department, alienating many of his diplomats and civil servants.




    Forty-four ambassadorships are unfilled with no nominations, and with Tillerson’s departure eight out of the nine top state department administrative positions are unoccupied. Staff also felt locked out of decision making, which was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small policy planning unit.


    Week by week, the state department became less relevant in Washington and in the rest of the world, either because it had fewer diplomats to dispatch, or less interest in multilateral diplomacy. It evidently did not have the ear of the president.


    That erosion of influence, of what was the world’s mightiest diplomatic institution, is likely to be Tillerson’s most lasting legacy. And very few, if any, believe it will be reversed by his successor.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ecretary-state

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