OPINION:
Fourteen months after he had become secretary of State, Rex Tillerson learned Tuesday that President Trump had fired him by sending out a public tweet.
It was a humiliating conclusion to a troubled relationship that from beginning to end was doomed by irreconcilable differences.
Though his dismissal was long anticipated, Mr. Tillerson said that he was “unaware of the reason,” and Mr. Trump didn’t go into any details, except to say they didn’t see eye to eye on many foreign policy issues.
As for Mr. Tillerson himself, one of the chief reasons had to be his belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the cyberwarfare meddling in the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion supported by our U.S. intelligence agencies and countless congressional investigations.
Mr. Trump has long refused to directly blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the false stories Russian cyberwar factories have churned out and planted throughout America’s Internet system. It was clearly the most contentious issue between Mr. Trump and Mr. Tillerson from the beginning.
“Their most consequential disagreement was surely about Russia. Tillerson was reportedly stunned that Trump took Putin’s denials of election meddling at face value (when he tells me that, he means it”),” writes Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.
“I’ve always felt, you know, fine about Putin. I think that he’s a strong leader. He’s a powerful leader,” Mr. Trump has said many times.
That’s not what Mr. Tillerson thinks about Mr. Putin and the Russian government, and he doubled down on his belief that Moscow was behind the poisoning of an ex-Russian, double-agent spy and his daughter with a deadly nerve substance in the U.K.
Just hours before Mr. Trump fired him, Mr. Tillerson called the poison attack “a really egregious act” that “clearly” had come from Russia.
And in a statement released by the State Department Monday evening, Mr. Tillerson aggressively stepped up his attack, calling the Kremlin “an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens.”
His blunt remarks about Russia’s complicity in the nerve gas attack closely tracked the response by British Prime Minister Theresa May, who said Monday that it is “highly likely” that Russia is responsible for the poisoning.
Meantime, Mr. Trump seemed a lot less willing to blame Russia for the attack and offend his buddy Putin.
“As soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be,” he said.
Was Mr. Tillerson’s tough condemnation of Russia the tipping point that angered Mr. Trump and triggered his sudden firing?
Or was it when Mr. Tillerson raised the issue again with reporters as he was traveling on his good will trip to Africa?
“It’s almost beyond comprehension that a state, an organized state, would do something like that,” Mr. Tillerson said.
When asked if the poisoning attack could trigger a mutual defense response with one of America’s closest allies, Mr. Tillerson told reporters during his flight to Africa, “it certainly will trigger a response. I’ll leave it at that,” according to a report from NBC News.
A strategic defense move like that could only be made by the president, of course, but even a public suggestion of such an action before consulting the White House may have pushed Mr. Trump over the edge.
There were many internal disputes between them over the course of Mr. Tillerson’s term. Mr. Trump responded to North Korea’s missile tests and boasts of being able to hit the U.S. mainland with counter threats of nuclear annihilation, while Mr. Tillerson urged negotiations with the rogue nation.
In his public tweets, Mr. Trump wrote that Mr. Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man Save your energy Rex.”
When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered to meet with Mr. Trump without pre-conditions, the president immediately accepted the offer, without first discussing it with Mr. Tillerson, who urged a more cautious approach.
Now we learn that Britain’s steely prime minister has ordered the immediate expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Moscow’s chemical attack on the former spy and his daughter. And a halt to any further high-level meetings with the Russians.
When is Mr. Trump going to get tough with the Kremlin, instead of praising and cozying up to Mr. Putin and his murderous, evil regime?
More than two years after Russia’s unprecedented efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, the administration announced limited sanctions Thursday on just 19 Russian individuals and five other groups, including its intelligence agencies.
The sanctions, the equivalent of a slap on the wrists, would merely deny the individuals any access to the U.S. financial system.
• Donald Lambro is a syndicated columnist and contributor to The Washington Times.
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