Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to be confused about basic elements of his job. First and foremost, dealing with the media, answering questions and informing the public of his meetings and objectives. The Secretary of State, who has not held a single press conference or appeared in any television interviews since being confirmed, refused to allow a traveling press pool to accompany him to South Korea for important talks about the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The situation is so unusual, a group of D.C. bureau chiefs from major news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal sent a letter of protest:
"We were deeply concerned to hear that Secretary Tillerson plans to travel to Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo to hold key meetings about some of the most important foreign policy issues for the United States without any traveling press," reads the letter, which was also signed by NPR, the BBC, Voice of America, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and the Agence France-Presse.
"Not only does this situation leave the public narrative of the meetings up to the Chinese foreign ministry as well as Korea’s and Japan’s, but it gives the American people no window whatsoever into the views and actions of the nation’s leaders."
Secretary of State Tillerson did allow a lone reporter to travel with him to Asia, Erin McPike of the conservative-owned and conservative-leaning outlet the Independent Journal Review. In the interview, Tillerson reiterates that he’s simply 'not a big media press access person' and does not intend to include the traveling press pool on every trip:
EM: Right so your answer is you don’t intend to change this model for your next trip.
RT: It’s gonna be trip dependent. It doesn’t mean we won’t, but we’re gonna look at every trip in terms of what my needs are. Look my ... First and foremost is what is my mission and why am I going? How can I best accomplish that mission? What’s the most effective way for me to do that? I’m not a big media press access person. I personally don’t need it. I understand it’s important to get the message of what we’re doing out, but I also think there’s only a purpose in getting the message out when there’s something to be done. And so we have a lot of work to do, and when we’re ready to talk about what we’re trying to do, I will be available to talk to people. But doing daily availability, I don’t have this appetite or hunger to be that, have a lot of things, have a lot of quotes in the paper or be more visible with the media. I view that the relationship that I want to have with the media, is the media is very important to help me communicate not just to the American people, but to others in the world that are listening. And when I have something important and useful to say, I know where everybody is and I know how to go out there and say it. But if I don’t because we’re still formulating and we’re still deciding what we’re going to do, there is not going to be a lot to say. And I know that you’ve asked me a lot of questions here that I didn’t answer, and I’m not answering them because we have some very, very complex strategic issues to make our way through with important countries around the world, and we’re not going to get through them by just messaging through the media. We get through them in face-to-face meetings behind closed doors. We can be very frank, open, and honest with one another and then we’ll go out and we’ll have something to share about that, but the truth of the matter is, all of the tactics and all of the things were going to do you will know them after they’ve happened.
Emphasis added. Daily availability? Outside of this one interview, he hasn’t answered any questions since being confirmed. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Secretary of State who does not believe in giving the media access to do their jobs and report back to the American people. This is not normal. This is not okay. He is no longer the CEO of ExxonMobil. No longer working on behalf of a private company. He is the Secretary of State for the United States of America. If he can’t stand the heat, he needs to get out of the kitchen and return to private life. There is no other choice.