Politico posted:

Tillerson blows up at top White House aide
The secretary of state, frustrated by negative press coverage and delays in appointing staff, unleashed his anger in front of Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner and others.
By JOSH DAWSEY , ELIANA JOHNSON and ALEX ISENSTADT 06/28/2017 08:04 PM EDT

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s frustrations with the White House have been building for months. Last Friday, they exploded.

The normally laconic Texan unloaded on Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to senior State Department posts and for questioning his judgment.

Tillerson also complained that the White House was leaking damaging information about him to the news media, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Above all, he made clear that he did not want DeStefano’s office to “have any role in staffing” and “expressed frustration that anybody would know better” than he about who should work in his department – particularly after the president had promised him autonomy to make his own decisions and hires, according to a senior White House aide familiar with the conversation.

The episode stunned other White House officials gathered in chief of staff Reince Priebus’s office, leaving them silent as Tillerson raised his voice. In the room with Tillerson and DeStefano were Priebus, top aide Jared Kushner and Margaret Peterlin, the Secretary of State’s chief of staff.

The encounter, described by four people familiar with what happened, was so explosive that Kushner approached Peterlin afterwards and told that Tillerson’s outburst was completely unprofessional, according to two of the people familiar with the exchange, and told her that they needed to work out a solution.

“Colleagues are capable of frank exchanges,” said R.C. Hammond, a State Department spokesman, when asked about the disagreement. “Evaluating nominees did get off to a slow start, but it is now moving along at a pretty good clip.”

It was the loudest manifestation yet of how frustrated Tillerson is in his new role. He has complained about the White House’s attempts to push personnel on him; about the president’s tweets; and about the work conditions in a West Wing where he sometimes finds loyalty and competence hard to by. Above all, the former Exxon Mobil CEO accustomed to being the final word on both personnel and policy in his corporate life, has balked at taking orders from political aides both younger and less experienced than he is.

Disputes between the White House and a Cabinet secretary, particularly over personnel, isn’t unusual. The Obama White House told Hillary Clinton that her friend Sidney Blumenthal couldn’t join her at the State Department. Other secretaries in Trump’s Cabinet have also clashed with DeStefano, who has a difficult job of balancing White House requests, political considerations and headstrong Cabinet secretaries, many with executive experience.

“It’s very common that there would be some tensions and some tussles between the White House and departments or agencies about senior personnel decisions,” said Matthew Waxman, a senior official in the State Department and National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “It’s just very abnormal that these issues wouldn’t be worked out more quickly.”

Waxman, now a Columbia University professor, said the fights are likely harder for a cabinet secretary like Tillerson, who is accustomed to supreme control as a CEO. “But we have a system of government where political appointments run very, very deep,” he said. “It’s the way the system works. The White House has the final say.”

Tillerson’s frustration with the White House’s meddling began early and has been a persistent issue. “He went into this with a very negative attitude towards the White House,” said a former senior State Department official familiar with his thinking, who recounted that during the transition, Tillerson opposed a candidate proposed by Trump’s team simply on the grounds that Trump’s team was proposing him.

He has sometimes conducted talks with potential job candidates without telling the White House, said one person familiar with his actions. Tillerson has told senior officials that Trump promised him autonomy, and that he wanted it, according to people who have spoken to him.

“Rex is a 65-year-old guy who worked his way up from the bottom at Exxon, and he chafes at the idea of taking orders from a 38-year-old political operative,” said a former transition aide who worked closely with Tillerson.

DeStefano worked for years as a senior adviser to former House Speaker John Boehner before he joined the Trump administration, where he has struggled to fill thousands of jobs across the government, though the pace has quickened in recent weeks.

Where Tillerson is concerned, the frustration goes both ways. Many of his proposed nominees have been rejected by DeStefano’s Office of Presidential Personnel either because they are Democrats or because they are Republicans who were critical of Trump during the campaign. Though Brian Hook, the director of policy planning, told associates several weeks ago that the department had several people in the pipeline, few have been announced since, and the White House continues to resist Tillerson’s choices.

He’s also faced resistance to leaning on civil servants. The White House has opposed the nomination of Bill Brownfield, currently the assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, to be assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Tillerson has also expressed his desire to nominate Susan Thornton, a career foreign service officer now serving as the acting assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, to take over the job in an official capacity – a move the White House has resisted, saying they want a political person in the role.

“If the secretary is putting forward a nominee such as Susan, he is doing it because he believes she's the most qualified and best fit for the position,” said Tillerson spokesman Hammond. “In this particular case he has the experience of working with her since she has been on the job since February. That includes a trip to Beijing, a visit from the Chinese president to Mar a Lago, and the first of a series of four dialogues.”

The secretary has additionally clashed with the White House over ambassadors, according to several people familiar with the conversations, and some of the conversations are ongoing.

Tillerson has also drawn criticism for isolating himself – with the help of Peterlin, his chief of staff – in his office on the State Department’s seventh floor and for cutting many career diplomats out of the policymaking process. That has frustrated the White House because even the president’s senior aides have had difficulty reaching him at times.

His leadership of the State Department seems a vast departure from his stewardship of Exxon, where he was considered a kinder, gentler executive than his predecessor, the combative and bombastic Lee Raymond. Asked about how to lead a large organization during a time of crisis, he told students at his alma mater, the University of Texas early last year: “You do have to communicate in times like this and you have to be visible.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/28/tillerson-blows-up-at-white-house-aide-240075

B B posted:

The encounter, described by four people familiar with what happened,

B B posted:

Apparently Tillerson is having trouble keeping it together:

FlamingLiberal posted:

I really don't understand why Tillerson is still in that job. Clearly Trump doesn't care for him much, he's miserable in the job, and nobody tells him anything. Now he's basically below goddamn Jared Kushner, who has even less international policy experience than Tillerson does.

FlamingLiberal posted:

I really don't understand why Tillerson is still in that job. Clearly Trump doesn't care for him much, he's miserable in the job, and nobody tells him anything. Now he's basically below goddamn Jared Kushner, who has even less international policy experience than Tillerson does.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

But he has no control when that will happen. It doesn't mean his ticking was fake, it just means whatever he saw is still not public. It could even mean it's part of an investigation instead of a news story.

Groovelord Neato posted:

pillsburysoldier posted:

https://twitter.com/FuzzBeedEli/status/880140553614237697

ReidRansom posted:

Probably nothing political but quite an explosion all the same....

https://twitter.com/MurrayStateNews/status/880190867943944192

Pollyanna posted:

Did that Wittes thing ever drop?

Pollyanna posted:

I have no idea why this was so hilarious to me but I loved it.

Volkerball posted:

https://twitter.com/_the_rogue/status/880206773918982144

Spooky

Groovelord Neato posted:

FlamingLiberal posted:

I really don't understand why Tillerson is still in that job. Clearly Trump doesn't care for him much, he's miserable in the job, and nobody tells him anything. Now he's basically below goddamn Jared Kushner, who has even less international policy experience than Tillerson does.

HappyHippo posted:

https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/880203396086681600

Of course. He probably doesn't even know the broad overview of the bill.

DaveWoo posted:

https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/880204296729526273

Covok posted:

I wonder if they will actually just try and repeal without replace bill under reconciliation. It's genius in a way. They would be able to go "welp, democrats stopped us so, therefore, it's all their fault." That'd be enough to get the drooling masses slobbering on their 80 year old dicks. It's unfortunate we live in a nation of goldfish who proudly forget how badly their politcians just tried to gently caress them.

Eltoasto posted:

I mean a certain percentage will go with that, but I think you underestimate the chunk of Americans who just don't pay much attention but blame whoever is in power at the time.

enraged_camel posted:

But your employer pays for that right?

Or are your out-of-pockets going up too?

pillsburysoldier posted:

https://twitter.com/funder/status/879527706219749376

BarbarianElephant posted:

Forcing internet vendors to pay tax is maybe something the *President* might achieve, if he set his mind to it, instead of whining about it.

FlamingLiberal posted:

I really don't understand why Tillerson is still in that job. Clearly Trump doesn't care for him much, he's miserable in the job, and nobody tells him anything. Now he's basically below goddamn Jared Kushner, who has even less international policy experience than Tillerson does.

evilweasel posted:

They've been noticeably tacking right and trying to take Fox viewers.

Shifty Pony posted:

In fun world news: the Petya ransomware attack from yesterday is looking more and more like it was a cyberweapon deployed to harvest credentials from and wipe as many computers in Ukraine as possible. The ransomware angle was just cover to keep the media busy - the worm just overwrites the master file table instead of encrypting it and the "installation ID" displayed supposedly to allow the device to de identified for decryption is literally just a randomly generated number.
Another analysis if you don't trust Kaspersky

Signs are also pointing to the initial distribution being performed via hijacking the automatic update function of an accounting program which is business are essentially required to use by the government of Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/marasawr/status/879811881850064896

Rosneft was reportedly infected but somehow miraculously managed to stop the worm (which can easily infect tens of thousands of computers within minutes) by switching to "reserve" systems. Also anecdotally yesterday I noticed that MAGA-bot accounts on twitter were posting about how absurd blaming this on Russia is, despite there being essentially no blame being leveled at that moment.

So yeah Russia just essentially looted and then neutron-bombed Ukraine's tax and accounting systems with a side effect of burning everyone involved economically in Ukraine.

nachos posted:

if Tillerson quits I guess in addition to FBI director we won't have a secretary of state either for the next 3 years

empty whippet box posted:

Maybe he'll offer the job to Mitt Romney.

quote:

In the video, the sky is dark and the Arkansas Capitol's dome is visible. Music is heard followed by a female voice, likely on the radio, saying, "Where do you go when you're faced with adversity and trials and challenges?" The driver is then heard growling, "Oh my goodness. Freedom!" before accelerating into the monument. The vehicle's speedometer is last shown at 21 mph (33 kph) and then a collision can be heard.

FlamingLiberal posted:

A real American hero.

https://twitter.com/orlandosentinel/status/880236901030080517


This is the same guy who took out the Oklahoma state capitol's statue 3 years ago

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

FlamingLiberal posted:

A real American hero.

https://twitter.com/orlandosentinel/status/880236901030080517


This is the same guy who took out the Oklahoma state capitol's statue 3 years ago