“There is strong sense of relief at State. The last year has been traumatic to put it mildly."
"That’s the other way in which State’s influence grew today. It’s not just a matter of Trump being more amenable to persuasion by Pompeo, it’s a matter of Pompeo potentially being more amenable to persuasion by career diplomats at the Department. "The UK Guardian
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful secretary of state, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” his wonderful boss tweeted in October. “Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”
"Rex Tillerson was a part-time truth-teller. In one national security meeting, he had the piercing insight and honesty to call Donald Trump “a moron” – possibly an Anglo-Saxon kind of moron. Yet, like his boss, he lacked the self-awareness to know that the same critique applied to himself, as the moron’s secretary-of-state.
"There were clues along the way, many of them spotted by the man he so openly disdained. It was the moron-in-chief who challenged the moron-of-state to an open contest of intellectual power. “I think it’s fake news,” Trump told Forbes magazine, dismissing the moronic comments. “But if he did [say] that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
"Genius. At some point, you just have to surrender to this kind of brainpower.
. . .
"Sadly all those executive skills did not include the ability to retain or build a senior staff at the state department, where the exodus of experience and talent has been a diplomatic blowout. He refused briefings from senior staff and refused to talk to the press. He hollowed out the senior ranks with no rhyme or reason, leaving critical posts unfilled, while others simply quit or retired. Among them was the leading foreign service official on North Korea, who retired just two weeks ago.
"Tillerson’s tenure was so bad, it prompted some rare bipartisan agreement. “America’s diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally,” warned John McCain and Jeanne Shaheen, the Republican and Democratic senators, in a letter to Tillerson late last year." . . .
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