It’s more turnover at the highest levels of the Trump administration: Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and will replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This means:
... a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.
Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled top diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.
Pompeo will replace him at the State Department, and Gina Hapsel — the deputy director at the CIA — will succeed him at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.
While the decision to fire Tillerson reportedly came last week, the announcement was made Just hours after Tillerson took a very different line from the White House on Russia’s involvement in the poisoning of a former spy, saying it “clearly came from Russia” and promising a strong U.S. response. By contrast, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had refused to pin responsibility on Russia, saying only that “we are standing with our UK ally.”