Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak wasn’t just “unprecedented,” it was truly “unpresidented.” No president with a functional State Department would have allowed a foreign minister and an ambassador—the one who’s already tripped up two administration officials (Mike Flynn and Jeff Sessions)—to hobnob with him in the Oval Office. It’s totally demeaning to the office. And now we find out from the Lester Holt interview that Trump did it as the unwitting puppet of Vladimir Putin, because Trump admitted it, of course.
“When I spoke with Putin, he asked me whether or not I would see Lavrov. Now what do I—should I say ‘No, I’m not gonna see him?’ I said, ‘I will see him.’”
Yes, Donald, anyone with a lick of sense given this current political moment would have said, “No. Lavrov can meet with Tillerson.” Instead, we have Trump, gripping and grinning Lavrov and Kislyak like they’re his two new besties.
Now, look, this meeting was deeply problematic on so many levels: the White House locked out U.S. press while allowing a Russian news agency in; it posed a total security risk by agents of the very government that just hacked our democracy; and the White House readout of the Lavrov meeting didn’t even include the fact that Kislyak was there (i.e. without Russian media photos, U.S. press wouldn’t have even known the meddling ambassador was in attendance.)
But consider something else, part of the reason that meeting ever took place is because Trump doesn’t, in fact, have a functional State Department to put the kibosh on such an ill-advised meeting (seriously, every foreign leader around the world now thinks/knows that Trump is Putin’s puppet).
Remember, Trump and Tillerson—who likely has more Russian contacts than any other Trump Cabinet member—have drained the State Department dry of institutional knowledge. There’s been not one, but two major purges at State, resulting in a major brain drain there.
Much of seventh-floor staff, who work for the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and the Counselor offices, were told today that their services were no longer needed.
These staffers in particular are often the conduit between the secretary’s office to the country bureaus, where the regional expertise is centered. Inside the State Department, some officials fear that this is a politically-minded purge that cuts out much-needed expertise from the policy-making, rather than simply reorganizing the bureaucracy.
For the first couple months of Trump’s presidency, journalists made much of the fact that Tillerson hadn’t been included in certain high-profile meetings with Trump and was therefore being minimized within the administration. That assessment appears to have been the exact opposite of what’s happened. A Politico survey this week of all the people who have met with Trump found that Tillerson had actually interacted with him more than than any other single Cabinet member. Here’s the top three:
•Tillerson, 22 times
•Wilbur Ross, 16 times
•Steve Mnuchin, 13 times
Something about Tillerson’s extensive Russian rolodex, the purge at State, and the Lavrov/Kislyak Oval Office visit this week feels very suspect. Instead of Tillerson being hobbled, he appears to have been empowered with a whole lot of access and influence and few people to rein him in. And if he were using that power to protect our national security interests along with the international reputation of the U.S., Russian operatives would never have been allowed to infiltrate the Oval Office this week and publicize it around the world.