Secretary of State Rex Tillerson probably won’t last the year. He’s wildly unpopular, and the friction between him and President Trump is palpable. The New York Times reports that CIA Director Mike Pompeo is poised to take over Tillerson’s role.
The Trump administration has suffered a lot of turmoil over the past year. Staffers are leaving their posts with surprising regularity. Tillerson’s departure won’t be the first high-profile firing that the president oversaw.
“Mr. Tillerson’s departure has been widely anticipated for months, but associates have said he was intent on finishing out the year to retain whatever dignity he could,” the Times writes.
“Even so, an end-of-year exit would make his time in office the shortest of any secretary of state whose tenure was not ended by a change in presidents in nearly 120 years.”
Democrats are sure to throw Tillerson’s removal in Trump’s face. The former Exxon executive never had much support among the left. His detractors claimed that he lacked the experience to be Secretary of State, a charge that has seemingly been proven.
“Mr. Tillerson has often been on a different page than Mr. Trump, and he has spent much of his time reorganizing the State Department, slashing its budget and pushing out more than 2,000 career diplomats,” notes the Times. “Even on that he ran into serious troubles. Just this week, the counselor he brought in to execute his plan quit after just three months.”
2018 will hopefully prove to be a more stable year for the administration.
(Source: New York Times)