Breaking in the Washington Post:
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name as his secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, who has worked extensively around the globe and built relationships with such leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin, three people close to the transition team confirmed Saturday.
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“He’s much more than a business executive; he’s a world-class player,” Trump says. “He knows many of the players, and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia — for the company, not for himself.”
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“Few corporate titans are closer to Putin than Tillerson,” said Jason Bordoff, founder of Columbia University’s center for global energy. “So his pick, along with Trump’s campaign rhetoric, would suggest a sharp shift in U.S. policy toward Russia.”
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[T]he Kremlin awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship, an honor reserved for foreigners.
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As secretary of state, Tillerson, who has been critical of the sanctions, would be in a position to argue for easing them, which could allow Exxon to resume operations. And for a company the size of Exxon, few countries outside of Russia hold sufficient potential to bolster the oil giant’s reserves. In addition to the Arctic, Exxon wants to drill in the deep waters of the Black Sea and search for shale oil in West Siberia. In each case, the company would be providing expertise and technology that Russia lacks.
“Russia is critical for Exxon,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.
Sanctions? Trump is preparing to give Russia a big fat fucking reward for their intervention in his favor. Each new development makes me more and more suspicious that Trump collaborated with Russia on that espionage. Go back and watch the debates again. Every single time he was questioned about Putin or Russia Trump was quite laudatory and dismissive of claims of espionage. There were the suspicious contacts between his campaign office and the computers at a Russian bank (which were supposedly debunked by anonymous FBI sources, which I think we can all agree now should be taken with a giant grain of salt.
But this is just brazen. Trump thinks he can’t be touched now. I hope the Electoral College, the President, Congress, our Intelligence Agencies and the Media prove him wrong.
I trust there will be no more debunking of Russian hacks or allegations of red-baiting on this site.