The long-simmering tensions between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came to a head Tuesday, when the commander-in-chief announced the ouster of the country’s top diplomat with a tweet.
One political analyst told Cheddar the move was telling.
“It speaks a lot to the character of the two men,” commentator Rick Wilson said. “When Donald Trump was selling steaks, vodka, and a fake university, Rex Tillerson was building Exxon into the largest energy company in the world.
“The anxiety that Trump has about Tillerson being more competent than him has finally played itself out.”
Tillerson reportedly found out about his firing after Trump took to Twitter to announce that CIA Director Mike Pompeo would take over at the State Department.
The president later said he and the former ExxonMobil CEO “were not really thinking the same,” but that Pompeo had a “similar thought process.”
Still, the decision to remove Tillerson came hours after he voiced his support of UK Prime Minister Theresa May and the British government, who on Monday said Russia was likely behind the poisoning of an ex-Moscow spy.
The Trump administration did not officially second those findings.
But Wilson said Tillerson was right to consider Russia “an imminent national security threat.”
“Donald Trump doesn’t see it that way,” he told Cheddar. “There’s something wrong about Donald Trump’s relationship and viewpoint about Vladimir Putin that makes him behave this way, even when serious and consequential people around him are warning him.”
The White House denied Tillerson’s dismissal had anything to do with Russia, instead saying it wanted to have new leadership in place before Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, expected this spring.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/no-collusion-and-tillerson-is-out).
A new warning about Russian interference in the 2020 election is raising questions about whether the U.S. is doing enough to prevent the kind of meddling the country saw in the 2016 election.
Roger Stone, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison on his convictions for witness tampering and lying to Congress. The action in federal court comes amid Trump's unrelenting defense of his longtime confidant that has led to a mini-revolt inside the Justice Department and allegations the president has interfered in the case.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, February 20, 2020.
From the opening bell, Democratic presidential foes have unleashed an aggressive verbal assault on New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised new questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics in a contentious debate Wednesday night on the Las Vegas Strip.
Federal Reserve officials were mostly optimistic about the U.S. and global economies last month, though they noted the risk posed by China’s viral outbreak and said they were ready to keep their benchmark interest rate at its current low level in the coming months.
At a closed-door gathering in the nation’s capital last month, representatives from close to two-dozen renewable energy, electric vehicle, and environmental advocacy organizations began the early stages of handicapping which Republican senators might be willing to join Democrats in supporting lucrative tax credits for the various green sectors – most of which were axed at the last minute late last year.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, February 19, 2020.
A bill to give Kentucky residents access to medical marijuana could go up for a full state House vote as soon as this week.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
