When former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson was tapped by Donald Trump to become his administration’s first secretary of state, the only positive thing anyone could say was that Tillerson was someone who had some knowledge of the world. Tillerson is a crumb bum. But he does have thoughts articulated around what he believes are clear goals. We vote in order to have people other than Tillerson in positions to make national security and globally important political advisory decisions. The bar, of course, was set so low with Trump as president that having anyone not named Trump, Kushner, Bannon, or Miller in any position seemed to be a step up. That being said, Tillerson’s interests in being Trump’s secretary of state were closely tied to his fossil fuel view of the world and world politics. After he was fired by Trump, a steady stream of stories leaked out about Tillerson describing Donald Trump as something of a lazy moron. None of those stories were surprising.
In all of the hullabaloo of the past week’s events—insurrection and attempted coup and all—an interview with Tillerson for Foreign Policy slipped by with little fanfare. In it, Tillerson gives his usual run through of trying to be as helpful to President Trump and the country as possible, but he also articulates some of his “frustrations” with Trump. Those frustrations include Donald Trump being an ignoramus, acting like an ignoramus, listening to other ignoramuses, and being an inscrutable ignoramus. Tillerson explained that one of the fundamental hurdles he had to overcome in communicating his global policy ideas to Trump was the fact that Trump’s “understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.” This might be the nicest thing Tillerson said about the president during the interview.
Tillerson went on to illustrate how he began his tenure trying to bring “four or five things I needed to talk to him about,” and very quickly comprehended that a victory was getting to talk to Trump about two or three things. This gave way to Tillerson realizing he needed to bring visual aids like charts or images. “If I could put a photo or a picture in front of him or a map or a piece of paper that had two big bullet points on it, he would focus on that, and I could build on that.” We knew this but man, what a bummer. Asked how Trump made informed decisions if it was so difficult to make him informed, Tillerson said he didn’t think Trump made many “informed decisions.”
Another issue Tillerson said he faced was that the many handlers (and possibly Fox News) would get to the president before Tillerson met with him, filling him with fact-free opinions and information. Having a conversation with someone who believes things that aren’t real makes for a difficult discussion. Asked about Trump’s friendliness towards authoritarian leaders and antagonism towards allies, Tillerson said he couldn’t tell you what was going on in Trump’s mind. But, as Tillerson went on to explain, nothing ever panned out. We are in no better place with Russia or with North Korea, our issues with China have only become exacerbated, and our relationship with Turkey is even more messy.
