Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption From "moron" to "castration": a history of Trump v Tillerson bust-ups
US President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via Twitter, naming CIA Director Mike Pompeo as his replacement.
Mr Tillerson's spokesman said he only learned he was out of a job when he saw the president's tweet thanking him for his service as top US diplomat.
The former ExxonMobil chief had a series of public rifts with the White House since he was appointed last year.
Mr Trump also named Gina Haspel to become the CIA's first female director.
What was Trump's reason?
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, Mr Trump said his differences with Mr Tillerson came down to personal "chemistry".
"We got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things," said the president.
"When you look at the Iran deal, I think it's terrible. I guess he thought it was OK.
"I wanted to either break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently, so we were not really thinking the same.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rex Tillerson: "I will now return to private life"
"With Mike, Mike Pompeo, we have a very similar thought process. I think it's going to go very well.
"Rex is a very good man, I like Rex a lot."
Mr Tillerson is the latest in a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Mr Trump took office.
Skip Twitter post by @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! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018 Report
How was Tillerson fired?
The Department of State said Mr Tillerson had not spoken to the president and was "unaware of the reason" for his firing.
Under Secretary Steve Goldstein said: "The Secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security."
Mr Goldstein himself was fired later on Tuesday by the White House.
Mr Tillerson said later in a news conference that he had received a call from the president on Air Force One after midday, about three hours after Mr Trump fired him via tweet.
He added he would finish his term on 31 March and would "return to private life as a private citizen".
According to the Associated Press, White House chief of staff John Kelly called Mr Tillerson on Friday and advised him to watch out for a presidential tweet about him.
Mr Kelly did not tell Mr Tillerson when the tweet would be posted or what it might say, reports the news agency.
The secretary of state was on an official tour of Africa last week when he was caught unawares by Mr Trump's agreement to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The top US diplomat's team said he was feeling unwell on Saturday and later in the weekend the state department said he would cut short his tour by a day.
"I felt like, look, I just need to get back," Mr Tillerson told reporters on his plane home, reports the Washington Post.
The 65-year-old arrived back in Washington before dawn on Tuesday to learn he was out of a job a few hours later.
The odd couple of politics no more
Analysis by Jon Sopel, BBC North America editor
The end was a perfect metaphor for the relationship. The odd couple of politics had been yoked together for too long.
Men of different temperaments, demeanour and style had reached a parting of the ways.
The secretary of state landed back at Joint Base Andrews to have a member of staff inform him that the president had tweeted.
Because Mr Tillerson is not on Twitter, the tweet had to be printed out. Fancy being the one tasked with handing that over to the boss. Fired by a tweet.
The career of a one-time giant of corporate America had come to an ignominious end.
Read Jon's analysis in full
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mike Pompeo: Meet America's new top diplomat
Who are the nominees?
A US Senate report found that Ms Haspel ran a notorious CIA prison in Thailand, where prisoners were waterboarded in 2002.
The CIA deputy director was also accused of destroying dozens of videotapes of interrogations at the camp.
Mr Pompeo is a former hardline conservative Republican lawmaker from Kansas and a Trump loyalist.
In 2014, he defended the CIA officers who waterboarded detainees as "patriots".
Both the new secretary of state and CIA director will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
Why was Tillerson fired?
Reports had swirled since last year of a schism in the Trump administration between the commander-in-chief and his top diplomat.
Last October Mr Tillerson was forced to convene a news conference to deny claims he planned to quit, though he did not address a report that he had referred to his boss as a moron after a Pentagon meeting.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trump says goodbye to Tillerson: 'I like Rex a lot, but we disagreed'
Last autumn, Mr Trump publicly undercut the former Texas oilman by tweeting that he was "wasting his time" trying to negotiate with North Korea.
In December, the secretary of state departed from administration talking points when he offered to begin direct talks with Pyongyang without preconditions.
The White House - which insisted North Korea must first accept any negotiations would be about giving up its nuclear arsenal - distanced itself from his remarks.
Mr Tillerson was reported to be astonished at how little Mr Trump grasped the basics of foreign policy.
The Republican president, meanwhile, was irritated by Mr Tillerson's body language during meetings, the New York Times reported.
The secretary of state was said to roll his eyes or slouch when he disagreed with Mr Trump's decisions.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired by President Donald Trump, according to White House officials’ statements on Tuesday morning.
He was in office for a little over a year, one of the shortest tenures in modern history — and it was not, experts say, a distinguished one.
“Tillerson would be at or near the bottom of the list of secretaries of state, not just in the post-Second World War world but in the record of US secretaries of state,” says Paul Musgrave, a scholar of US foreign policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The former Exxon Mobil CEO, whose nomination was initially greeted warmly by prominent foreign policy hands, will leave office without any major accomplishments. This is largely because he failed to wield any significant influence in internal administration debates over issues like North Korea or Russia, and in fact actively alienated the president during several key policy debates.
His push to slash “inefficiencies” in the State Department and seeming disinterest in working closely with longtime staff were even more damaging. Under Tillerson’s watch, 60 percent of State’s top-ranking career diplomats resigned and new applications to join the foreign service fell by half, according to a November count by the American Foreign Service Association.
This hollowing-out of the foreign service, combined with Tillerson’s inability to appoint people to vital positions like ambassador to South Korea, delayed American responses to major crises and weakened the State Department for a “generation,” according to George Washington University’s Elizabeth Saunders.
This can’t all be blamed on Tillerson: Even a skilled and experienced diplomat would have had trouble maintaining influence in the chaotic Trump White House, a place where foreign policy is often made over Twitter. As if to underscore the point, Trump announced Tillerson’s departure in a tweet — before the secretary himself could make a statement.
Yet scholars and foreign policy practitioners across the political spectrum agree that he deserves much of the blame.
"I think he really will go down as one of the worst secretaries of State we've had," Eliot Cohen, counselor to the State Department under President George W. Bush, told Axios’s Jonathan Swan. “He will go down as the worst Secretary of State in history,” tweeted Ilan Goldenberg, an Obama-era State Department official.
Many expected Tillerson to be one of the “adults in the room,” helping Secretary of Defense James Mattis rein in some of Trump’s wildest ideas. His attempts to play that role backfired — his ham-handed attempts to manage Trump alienated the president, who has reportedly complained about his “totally establishment” views on foreign policy.
When you combine the lack of influence over Trump with Tillerson’s dismantling of the State Department’s staff — he made more of a mess of the department in a shorter amount of time than any other secretary of state in history — you have a truly disastrous tenure in Foggy Bottom.
“He took the job and made it smaller,” Musgrave says.
Tillerson failed at the thing he was supposed to be good at
When Trump announced Tillerson as his pick for secretary of state, back in December 2016, the foreign policy community was split on the appointment.
As CEO of Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest corporations, Tillerson seemed to be more than qualified to effectively manage a sprawling bureaucracy like the State Department. Mainstream GOP foreign policy experts like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley all praised the pick.
"He would bring to the position vast knowledge, experience, and success in dealing with dozens of governments and leaders in every corner of the world,” Gates said in a statement. "He is a person of great integrity whose only goal in office would be to protect and advance the interests of the United States.”
Critics, though, worried about Tillerson’s close relationship with Vladimir Putin and Exxon’s willingness to strike deals with corrupt foreign dictators and history of lobbying against climate change (though the corporation now says it accepts climate science). During his January confirmation hearings, senators grilled him about both Russia and climate change, with Democrats clearly unsatisfied by his answers.
"Do you lack the knowledge to answer my question, or refuse to answer my question?" Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) puffed after Tillerson repeatedly stonewalled his questions about Exxon funding climate change denial. "A little of both,” Tillerson replied.
Tillerson was confirmed in late January 2017 nonetheless, in a vote that basically fell along party lines. Quickly, he set about upending everyone’s views about him. As soon as March, it had become clear that the conventional wisdom was 100 percent wrong. The fears about Tillerson’s policy views had proven overblown, mostly because he had been completely overshadowed in internal White House deliberations over issues like Syria and Russia.
“More than a month after he became America’s top diplomat, Rex Tillerson is like no other modern secretary of State: he’s largely invisible,” the LA Times’s Tracy Wilkinson reported at the time. “His influence at the White House is difficult to discern. He appears to be competing with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Stephen Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, both of whom have Trump’s ear on foreign policy.”
The optimism about Tillerson’s management acumen, by contrast, had clearly been misplaced. Tillerson failed to place political appointees in a number of vital leadership positions, failed to spend a lot of time with his own employees, and pushed out longtime employees without clear replacements in mind. Morale inside the organization collapsed.
“I used to love my job,” one State Department staffer told the Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe at the time. “Now, it feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally ill family member. You come in every day, you bring flowers, you brush their hair, paint their nails, even though you know there’s no point. But you do it out of love.”
What was true in March remained true for the rest of Tillerson’s brief tenure. On issue after issue, Tillerson proved to be out of touch with the president’s foreign policy positions.
The US bombed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in early April — just days after Tillerson suggested the administration would be fine with Assad staying in power. On June 9, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia and its allies to end their isolation of Qatar; less than two hours later, Trump sided with the Saudis by labeling Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”
On July 20, after a meeting in which the president reportedly asked for a major expansion of America’s nuclear arsenal, Tillerson told aides that the president was a moron — or, according to some reports, a “fucking moron.” One time, Tillerson tried to open the door to negotiations with North Korea — and Trump slapped him down in a tweet.
The staffing problem at the State Department remained bad throughout Tillerson’s tenure and in some ways got even worse. Only 64 out of 153 political appointees were confirmed by the Senate, according to a count by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service. He had not nominated anyone to be the assistant secretary supervising vital regions like Asia and the Middle East, nor did he nominate ambassadors for countries as important as Saudi Arabia and South Korea.
These kinds of vacancies can be devastating.
Political appointees are necessary to shape policy, as they serve as a conduit between the administration and foreign governments. Without people in these positions, career diplomats fill in as best as they can, but they have a hard time making new decisions or formulating new policy. It’s near unprecedented to go this long with this many vacancies, because it cripples America’s ability to develop diplomatic stances on vital issues.
“When I was assistant secretary, I was sworn in early April [of the first year],” says Hank Cohen, the assistant secretary of state for Africa under George H.W. Bush. Under Tillerson, this position has still not officially been filled. “It’s a big problem,” Cohen said.
In addition to that, it’s not like the past year has been uneventful. During Tillerson’s tenure, tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program got so bad that war started to seem like a real possibility — and then President Trump decided to sit down with Kim Jong Un for the first direct negotiations ever between Washington and Pyongyang. One US ally in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia) laid economic siege to another (Qatar). Russia apparently poisoned a double agent on British soil.
And even the career staff suffered under Tillerson. He eliminated entire segments of the department, like the department that tracked war crimes. He imposed limits on transfers inside the organization, typically a way the State Department deals with staffing shortages, in late June.
He publicly defended a Trump administration proposal to cut his department’s budget by 30 percent and has repeatedly pushed for staffing cuts despite repeated rebukes from Congress. He also cut off the department from vital recruiting sources, like the Presidential Management Fellows program.
“Secretary Tillerson’s term has led to widespread demoralization in the foreign service, the dismissal or resignation of people with expertise that individually may not be irreplaceable but as a cohort certainly becomes so,” Musgrave says. “That hinders the State Department’s ability to enhance US interests through diplomacy.”
The State Department’s personnel shortfalls have long-term effects on everything ranging from the South China Sea to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — you can’t negotiate very well if you don’t have people who know how to do it. Saunders analogizes the US under Tillerson’s emaciated State Department to a person who doesn’t have health insurance. “Your life is probably fine — up until the point you get sick,” she says.
The source of Tillerson’s failures is both Trump and his own choices
Why did things go so wrong for Tillerson?
Some of the blame has to be laid at his boss’s feet. Trump is running a chaotic administration that has nominated a shockingly low number of political appointees across practically every department. The White House shot down so many of Tillerson’s picks for top deputies that he actually screamed at a group of White House aides during a meeting.
Trump personally displayed little to no interest in learning from the expertise of State Department personnel, preferring instead to push his pet priorities like weakening the Iran deal and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.
“It may be that in a Trump administration, the structural realities of the way the White House works, you can only choose among varieties of failure,” Musgrave says.
But that excuse only goes so far. Defense Secretary Mattis hasn’t been immune to Trump’s bizarre management style — he was blindsided, most notably, by Trump’s proposal to ban transgender people from serving in the military — but on the whole, he has been far more effective at advocating for his department’s interests and gaining influence over the president’s decision-making.
You could say this is because Trump has more respect for generals than diplomats, and that’s partially true. Mattis also seems better at handling Trump’s mercurial nature; according to the New York Times, Tillerson frequently annoyed the president in meetings by (among other things) saying, “It’s your deal,” whenever Trump overruled him.
But a third and vital part of it, experts say, is that Mattis — a career military professional and former general — is substantially better at working in Washington. In particular, Mattis understood that working closely with his staff in the Pentagon allowed him to advance policy ideas through the bureaucracy.
“Mattis is drawing on the expertise of his building. Some of that is a product of [his own] experience,” Saunders says. “Tillerson is not a creature of his building, nor is he a creature of government at all.”
By most accounts, Tillerson failed to build relationships with people in Foggy Bottom, relying instead on an insular inner circle made up of a few longtime confidants. This decision “constitutes the core of his failure,” according to Musgrave: It made it hard for Tillerson to garner influence inside the White House and to understand what his staff could do and how to deploy them effectively.
“Tillerson had a half-dozen, maybe a dozen aides who are not familiar with Washington and especially not familiar with the State Department,” Musgrave says. “But he seems to rely on these people who are loyal to him, known to him, at the expense of building relationships with the people in the building.”
Perhaps if Tillerson had developed closer relationships with State’s career staff, he would have understood that supporting budget cuts to his own department and downsizing staff would demoralize them. Perhaps he would have been able to develop new ideas that would have gotten the president’s ear. Perhaps he would have been more able to convince the White House to trust his judgment on political appointees.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But the truth is we won’t know because Tillerson, to a degree nearly unprecedented in State’s history, failed to even try to work with his own department.
All of which invites the question: Why did this multimillionaire leave his cushy job at the head of one of the world’s largest corporations and then take a job at a government bureaucracy he didn’t understand and seemingly didn’t respect?
It’s a question only Tillerson can answer. And right now, it doesn’t seem like he’s in the mood for a lot of talking.
Donald Trump threw US diplomacy into fresh turmoil on Tuesday by firing his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson – said to have discovered his fate via Twitter – and promoting two officials condemned by human rights groups for endorsing or overseeing torture.
Mike Pompeo: who is Trump's new pick for secretary of state? Read more
A visibly shaken and demoralised Tillerson spoke briefly at the state department, without taking reporters’ questions. He did not criticise Trump’s decision but nor did he include the president in a list of thank yous.
Tillerson said he received a call “a little after noon time” from Trump and chief of staff John Kelly “to ensure we have clarity as to the days ahead”. He added: “What is most important is to ensure an orderly and smooth transition during a time that the country continues to face significant policy and national security challenges.”
Effective at the end of the day, all duties would be delegated to deputy secretary John Sullivan. Tillerson’s time at state will formally end at midnight on 31 March.
Reflecting on his tenure, Tillerson claimed “we exceeded the expectations of almost everyone” regarding North Korea. He acknowledged that much works remains to be done on the relationship with China. In what some interpreted as a parting shot at Trump, he singled out the “troubling behaviour and actions” of Russia.
“Russia must assess carefully as to how its actions are in the best interest of the Russian people and of the world more broadly,” Tillerson said. “Continuing on their current trajectory is likely to lead to greater isolation on their part, a situation which is not in anyone’s interest.”
Play Video 1:05 Rex Tillerson: 'I'll return to private life proud to have served my country' – video
Trump stunned Washington again by announcing in a morning tweet that Tillerson would be replaced by CIA director Mike Pompeo, a hardliner. Gina Haspel, Pompeo’s deputy, would be nominated as the CIA’s first female director.
Pompeo has been criticised for claiming waterboarding is not torture and opposing the closure of Guantánamo Bay. Haspel has come under scrutiny for her role in CIA torture under George W Bush and the destruction of evidence.
Even as the reverberations continued in Washington and beyond, yet more drama bubbled up in the administration before Tuesday was out. The veterans affairs secretary, David Shulkin, is reported to be hanging on to his job by a thread after ethics violations concerning a trip to Europe with his wife and new allegations that he had a member of his security detail go shopping with him at a branch of Home Depot and then cart the purchases into his house.
Trump is considering replacing Shulkin with the energy secretary, Rick Perry, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, the interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, was questioned by a congressional committee on Tuesday about a habit of using charter flights on government business. This follows a recent scandal over the housing secretary, Ben Carson, overspending on office refurbishments and longstanding criticism of the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, regularly flying first class at taxpayers’ expense.
But in a cabinet seemingly in constant turmoil, as America’s top diplomat, Tillerson, 65, had the thankless task of playing second fiddle to Trump. His departure had long been predicted after a series of clashes but it came at a critical juncture, as the president threatens a global trade war and prepares to meet the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. But the manner of his termination was abrupt even by the standards of the current White House.
Quick guide Tillerson's last week - in quotes Show Hide Thursday: no talks with North Korea "We're a long way from negotiations. We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it. I don't know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations." Friday: North Korea talks were Trump's decision “That is a decision the president took himself. I spoke to him very early this morning about that decision and we had a very good conversation. President Trump has said for some time that he was open to talks and he would willingly meet with Kim when conditions were right. And I think in the president’s judgement that time has arrived now.” Monday: Russia warned on UK spy poisoning "What we've seen is a pivot on their part to be more aggressive. And this is very, very concerning to me and others that there seems to be a certain unleashing of activity that we don't fully understand what the objective behind that is […] It certainly will trigger a response. I'll leave it at that.” Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America
Kelly called and woke Tillerson at about 2.30am on Saturday, as the secretary toured Africa. The White House claimed Kelly made clear the president wanted Tillerson to step aside and that he should return to Washington as soon as possible.
State department officials said Kelly told Tillerson only that there might be a presidential tweet that would concern him and did not indicate what it might say or when it might appear, the Associated Press reported. Journalists travelling with Tillerson said he appeared upbeat on Monday and gave no hint his job was in jeopardy.
Then came the tweet, shown by a senior aide to Tillerson. Steve Goldstein, the under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, issued a statement that said: “The secretary did not speak to the president this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling and not to be regretted.”
Goldstein also said Tillerson had “every intention of staying”. A few hours later Goldstein himself was dismissed, apparently for publicly contradicting the White House.
Trump appeared calm on a chilly Tuesday morning as he stepped out of the White House. Pausing on his way to the Marine One helicopter before heading to California, he insisted he had been “talking about this for a long time”.
The president said: “I actually got along well with Rex, but really it was a different mindset, a different thinking. When you look at the Iran deal, I think it’s terrible. I guess he thought it was OK. I wanted to either break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently. So we were not really thinking the same.”
Play Video 0:40 Trump on Tillerson: 'It was a different mindset' - video
Tillerson has argued strenuously that the US should abide by the agreement with Tehran about its nuclear ambitions that was reached under Barack Obama in 2015. Pompeo is a longstanding opponent of the deal.
Last summer, Tillerson was reported to have called Trump a “fucking moron”, a report he did not deny.
Trump was asked twice if he had fired Tillerson “because he called you a moron”. The president twice said he could not hear, then said: “I respect his intellect. I respect the process that we’ve all gone through together. We have a very good relationship for whatever reason, chemistry, whatever it is – why do people get along?
“I’ve always, right from the beginning, from day one, I’ve gotten along well with Mike Pompeo, and frankly I get along well with Rex too. I wish Rex a lot of good things. I think he’s going to be very happy. I think Rex will be much happier now.”
Rex Tillerson: a rocky road with Trump that ended with a 4am surprise firing Read more
On Monday, Tillerson issued a much sharper response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in the UK than the White House, naming Russia as a suspect, a step Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, had avoided. Media reports suggested the White House was furious at being made to look soft on Russia.
But a senior White House official claimed the firing was related to “upcoming talks with North Korea and various ongoing trade negotiations”. Responding to a question about his announcement of a meeting with Kim shortly after Tillerson said talks were “a long way” off, Trump said: “No, I really didn’t discuss it very much with him, honestly.
“I made that decision by myself. Rex wasn’t, as you know, in this country. I made the North Korea decision with consultation from many people but I made that decision by myself.”
Tillerson’s CEO approach was ill-suited to the state department, critics say, and it has been diminished and marginalised over the past year. The latest shake-up comes after the departures of the White House staff secretary, Rob Porter, communications director Hope Hicks and economic adviser Gary Cohn in as many weeks – an unprecedented turnover rate. But none has the international implications of a change to secretary of state.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mike Pompeo, the newly installed secretary of state. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the House, said: “Whenever Tillerson’s successor goes into meetings with foreign leaders, his credibility will be diminished as someone who could be here today and gone tomorrow.”
Who is Gina Haspel? Trump's pick for CIA chief linked to torture site Read more
In a statement, Pompeo said he was “deeply grateful to President Trump”.
Pompeo and Haspel face tough confirmation battles in the Senate.
Haspel, who joined the CIA in 1985, reportedly oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects in 2002 and later took part in an order to destroy videos documenting their interrogations at a “black site” prison in Thailand.
Two CIA contract psychologists who helped establish “enhanced interrogation” procedures sought to oblige Haspel to testify last year in a legal suit brought by torture victims, in the hope of demonstrating they were acting on CIA instructions. The justice department prevented her appearing in court.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Haspel was “unfit to lead the CIA” and “should be prosecuted not promoted”.
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