On Friday, President Donald Trump praised his current secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and poured out invective against the man who last held the job, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Tillerson had attacked him the day before.
“Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him,” the president began. “His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!”
Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018
This comment came one day after Tillerson delivered his own attack against the president, calling him “undisciplined.”
“It’s challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil Corporation… to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things. But rather just kind of says, ‘Look, this is what I believe and you can try to convince me otherwise,’ but most of the time you’re not going to do that,” Tillerson told CBS News on Thursday.
“We did not have a common value system,” Tillerson said of Trump. “When the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it,’ I’d have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law. It violates a treaty.’ You know, he got really frustrated.”
“I think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him, ‘You can’t do that, and let’s talk about what we can do,'” Tillerson said. “He acts on his instincts, in some respects it looks like impulsiveness… But… it’s not his intent to act on impulse. I think he really is trying to act on his instincts.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member