Rex Tillerson Out as Secretary of State, Pompeo to Replace Him

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been removed from the post and Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, is being tapped to replace him, President Donald Trump said in a tweet Tuesday.

“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!” he said.

Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobile, had a fraught tenure that included clashes with the White House. His relationship with the president soured over a period of months.

The Washington Post first reported the news of his ouster.

Pompeo and Haspel will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

“I look forward to guiding the world’s finest diplomatic corps in formulating and executing the President’s foreign policy,” Pompeo said in a statement released by the White House that also included a statement from Trump and Haspel.

Trump thanked Tillerson, saying “a great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months.”

NBC News reported in October reported that Tillerson called Trump a “moron” after a meeting at the Pentagon on July 20. Tillerson afterward deflected questions about the insult at a press conference, saying, “I’m not going to deal with petty stuff like that.”

His refusal to deny the charge was said to have infuriated Trump. Tillerson’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, later said Tillerson had not made the comment.

Tillerson also had threatened to resign in late July about the time Trump made a politicized speech to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization that Tillerson once headed. He was talked into remaining by other administration officials, according to NBC. Pence counseled Tillerson on how he could ease tensions with Trump, NBC News reported.

“The vice president has never had to persuade me to remain as secretary of state because I have never considered leaving this post,” he said at the press conference.

But despite Tillerson’s effort to quash the October report, it continued to vie for headlines with Trump’s visit to Las Vegas to pay respects after a gunman killed 58 in the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. During the visit, Trump maintained he had “total confidence” in Tillerson, dismissing NBC News report as “fake news.”

Tillerson was a surprise choice as secretary of state because of his lack of experience as a diplomat, though he had traveled widely and had negotiated gas and oil agreements in troubled parts of the world.

He was immediately criticized for a close relationship with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who awarded him Russia’s Order of Friendship in 2013, and for his public skepticism of sanctions against Russia, which thwarted some of Exxon Mobil’s biggest projects in Russia.

Tillerson, who had never served in government before accepting the job of secretary of state at his wife’s urging, had a precarious position in the Trump administration. He expressed more traditional Republican views on many foreign policy topics than did Trump, sometimes earning the president’s mockery. Trump publicly undermined him over North Korea in October, calling him out on Twitter over his attempts to open a line of communication on nuclear tensions.

“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted, referring to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

Trump similarly undercut Tillerson earlier in the summer over a regional crisis involving Qatar. Trump accused Qatar of being a “high level” sponsor of terrorism as the State Department was trying to ease a blockade of the Gulf state.

Tillerson’s diminished role in the Trump administration resulted in fears that the State Department was adrift, NBC News reported in September. During the United Nations General Assembly that month, Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador, had to step in at meetings Tillerson either ignored or refused to attend. His department was hobbled by budget cuts and unfilled staff positions, both of which he defended as part of an effort to make it more efficient.

And in August, Tillerson distanced himself from Trump’s handling of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying the president “speaks for himself.”

Trump was said to be “livid” about Tillerson’s comment, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted.

While in office, Tillerson navigated the imposition of sanctions on North Korea by the United Nations Security Council for testing intercontinental ballistic missiles. North Korea continued to fire missiles.

In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, defense policy expert Max Boot called Tillerson “quite possibly the most ineffectual secretary of state since America’s rise to global prominence in 1898.”