gods forbid a Secretary of State not constantly stroke the president’s ego:
The already tense relationship between the two headstrong men — one a billionaire former real estate developer, the other a former captain of the global oil industry — has ruptured into what some White House officials call an irreparable breach that will inevitably lead to Tillerson’s departure, whether immediately or not. Tillerson’s dwindling cohort of allies say he has been given an impossible job and is doing his best with it.…
And as Tillerson has traveled the globe, Trump believes his top diplomat often seems more concerned with what the world thinks of the United States than with tending to the president’s personal image.
(click here to continue reading ‘Death spiral’: Tillerson makes nice but may not last long with Trump – The Washington Post.)
I’m not sure who the source on this is, but it certainly made me laugh as much as Tillerson’s quote that became public yesterday, namely that he said that Trump is “a fucking moron”, and then didn’t deny it.
If Tillerson resigns before the end of the year, my understanding is he’ll have to pay a massive capital gains tax penalty on the stock he sold to become Secretary of State, so unless Trump gets worked up into an uncontrollable rage, Tillerson will last until 2018. He’s also holding out to try to lift those sanctions on Russia so that Exxon can develop oil fields there, worth trillions of dollars by some estimates. Tillerson’s Exxon stock options do not mature for several more years, he’s willing to tough out the insults until the Russian deal is completed, or Trump gets impeached.