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Rex Tillerson Says He Repeatedly Stopped Donald Trump From Breaking The Law

Rogue Valley

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Rex Tillerson Says He Repeatedly Stopped Donald Trump From Breaking The Law

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Rex "Order of Friendship" Tillerson.

12/7/18
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he was fired by Donald Trump because he wouldn’t let the president break the law. In an interview with CBS News’ Bob Schieffer on Thursday, Tillerson suggested that his ouster was inevitable because he was constantly telling Trump no ― especially when it came to violating laws. “I’d have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you wanna do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law, it violates treaty.’ He got really frustrated,” Tillerson said. “I think he grew tired of me being the guy who told him, ‘You can’t do that.’” Tillerson appeared to be speaking broadly, and it’s unclear what treaties the president wanted to violate. But he didn’t pull any punches, and noted that working with Trump was awful because the president didn’t like to read. “What’s challenging for me ... is to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things,” he said. “We are starkly different in our styles, we did not have a common value system.” The interview was, as The Washington Post put it, the closest we’ve seen Tillerson get to publicly espousing his real feelings about Trump. Last year, he refused to deny reports that he referred to Trump as a “moron,” but he’s never publicly accused the president of attempting to break the law. In March, Tillerson was canned by Trump in favor of Mike Pompeo. He told Schieffer that he’d never met the president “until the day he asked me to be secretary of state.”

Trump and Tillerson had never met until Trump nominated Rex :shock:

I actually think Trump was impressed with Tillerson's "Russia Order of Friendship" medal bestowed on Rex by Putin himself.

But it was a very bad career decision by Tillerson to terminate his lofty position as CEO of of ExxonMobil to serve in the dysfunctional Trump Cabinet.

Fortunately for Trump, Tillerson has the class to only broadly hint at how dysfunctional it actually was.
 
I'm not surprised by this. Tillerson seemed like a serious guy that was not used to navigating politics or the lunatic boss.
By the way he didn't give up his job...he retired and his wife talked him into doing the SOS thing.
I'm glad he's out for numerous reasons.
 
By the way he didn't give up his job...he retired and his wife talked him into doing the SOS thing.

Not according to the sources I've read.

Rex Wayne Tillerson (born March 23, 1952) is a former American government official and former energy executive who served as the 69th United States Secretary of State from February 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, under President Donald Trump.[1][2][3] Originally a civil engineer, Tillerson joined Exxon in 1975. He rose to become chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, holding that position from 2006 until 2017, when he left to join the Trump administration.

Rex Tillerson
 
Rex Tillerson Says He Repeatedly Stopped Donald Trump From Breaking The Law

I actually think Trump was impressed with Tillerson's "Russia Order of Friendship" medal bestowed on Rex by Putin himself.

That...is a very real possibility. I often compare the Simpsonized version of President Schwarzenegger with Trump in my head. They are even the same color!

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President Schwarzenegger is famous for saying, "I was elected to lead. Not to read," in The Simpsons Movie.
 
Are Trump supporters going to call Tillerson a liberal now?

How can Trump supporters continue to support him? A cabinet member who worked closely with Trump, who defended Trump, clearly explains that Trump is totally incompetent and immoral. How can Trump supporters turn a blind eye to this? It's mindboggling!

I bet Trumpsters will just ignore this thread because what can they say? Tillerson is working for the Clintons?
 
Are Trump supporters going to call Tillerson a liberal now?

How can Trump supporters continue to support him? A cabinet member who worked closely with Trump, who defended Trump, clearly explains that Trump is totally incompetent and immoral. How can Trump supporters turn a blind eye to this? It's mindboggling!

I bet Trumpsters will just ignore this thread because what can they say? Tillerson is working for the Clintons?

Maybe they'll think the anonymous sources were the ones who told the reporters that tillerson said this.
 
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Trump "ohhhhh, I'll hit you back twice as hard"

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I'm not surprised by this. Tillerson seemed like a serious guy that was not used to navigating politics or the lunatic boss.
By the way he didn't give up his job...he retired and his wife talked him into doing the SOS thing.
I'm glad he's out for numerous reasons.

Have you forgotten the circumstances under which Tillerson was fired? General Kelly called him and warned him there would be a tweet coming from Trump, sure enough it came, while he was in the bathroom.

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Deafening silence from Trump supporters.
 
Deafening silence from Trump supporters.

So far Trump supporters are steering clear of this thread and the thread about Trump tweeting that Tillerson is “dumb as a rock”.

It is tough behavior to defend but I can think of a couple posters who will probably give it a go here in a bit.
 
So far Trump supporters are steering clear of this thread and the thread about Trump tweeting that Tillerson is “dumb as a rock”.

It is tough behavior to defend but I can think of a couple posters who will probably give it a go here in a bit.

WTF do they go????????
 
So far Trump supporters are steering clear of this thread and the thread about Trump tweeting that Tillerson is “dumb as a rock”.

It is tough behavior to defend but I can think of a couple posters who will probably give it a go here in a bit.

There is lots of personal behavior by Trump that is indefensible, this being an example. However, I imagine that (as person sometimes accused of being a Trumper) many of us have had to make peace with the reality that Trump is mental and that his personality is of secondary importance to his policy mission and direction.

I sat out the election, and was a "no-trumper" for nine months afterward. I loathed his treatment of others, his rudeness, his bullying name-calling, his destructiveness to the makeup of the GOP - enough so I left the party and, to date, won't vote in any future elections. And when it came to policy, I never trusted him - flipping his direction like a revolving door at Macys. Hell, I was kicked off a conservative forum for calling him "Trumpollini".

And when it comes to his personality, he has not (as a friend predicted) grown into the office. He has never been willing to give up his tweets, and finds nothing offensive about publicly humiliating current and former employees. If, after a sustained campaign of public humiliations, if they don't resign he will eventually fire them, Sessions being the last example.

So nothing is really to be said - critics in the party have exhausted themselves and it is not productive to keep complaining - he is who he is. One could spend a lifetime attempting to untangle the sensationalist negative press ledes about Trump and what he said or did; half of them valid, the other half a pile of partisan horse poo. Its a waste of time to think of the soap opera as the substance of what matters.

What matters is policy, and in policy Tillerson was clueless. Even the Washington Post says he should never have been hired - he had no foreign policy background, he challenged and refused to facilitate Trumps policies (e.g. ending the Iran treaty), and failed to secure any major agreement with foreign states. He spent his time saying no to Trump, using the hidebound advice of the old guard at State. He was not "dumb as a rock", far from it, but he was foolish to take a job in which he assumed the professionalism of Exxon could be found in the blood sport of Washington, or under likes of Donald Trump.

Trump has found someone, Mike P., who seems to work with his personality, and supports his policies - good for him. He also finally learned that he should have hired John Bolton long ago, rather than handsome execs from exxon and the like.

But Trump will always be Trump, and most of us on the right have learned to live with it.
 
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Not according to the sources I've read.

From what I read back when he was appointed. He was a few months like 3 months away from mandatory retirement where he would have gotten a bunch of stuff. Retiring early gave him a bag of tax free money earlier than retirement would have.
I only remember this because I thought wow this guy is getting a sweet deal for leaving just a few months early. I also remember his wife being the catalyst he didn't want the job.
I don't wanna dig up articles from 2017.
If you say he left a cushy good paying job just so he could be Trumps SOS...okay.
 
He also finally learned that he should have hired John Bolton long ago, rather than handsome execs from exxon and the like.

LOL, Bolton? Bolton is the Iraq war cheerleader. He's the most hawkish of hawkish Republicans. He doesn't agree with anything Trump believes. I fully expect him to be fired at some point.

Trump hired Tillerson without ever considering whether Tillerson agrees with his worldview. To be clear, Trump has no coherent worldview beyond greed and corruption. Tearing up the Iran deal was idiotic. The Europeans saved us from Iran just going back to building nukes and forcing a military confrontation.
 
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