U.S. President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, with whom he had repeatedly clashed, and replaced him with CIA director Mike Pompeo, a right-wing former congressman who has advocated a hawkish posture toward North Korea, Iran and other countries. The tension between Trump and Tillerson was obvious even before the public learned in October that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron.” Tillerson reportedly thought Trump was ill-informed and irresponsible. Trump reportedly thought Tillerson was disloyal, ineffective and overly fond of traditionalist policy. The discord had undermined Tillerson’s credibility with foreign governments. And Trump had vividly demonstrated, on numerous occasions, that the former ExxonMobil chief executive was indeed not actually speaking for him.They differed to the end. The same day last week that Tillerson said the U.S. was “a long ways from negotiations” with North Korea, Trump made an impromptu decision, without consulting Tillerson, to meet with Kim Jong Un. This week, as Trump and his aides declined to name Russia as the culprit in the nerve-agent attack on a former spy in England, Tillerson did so himself.“We were not really thinking the same. With Mike, Mike Pompeo, we have a very similar thought process,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.“I’ve worked with Mike Pompeo now for quite some time. Tremendous energy, tremendous intellect, we’re always on the same wavelength. The relationship has been very good and that’s what I need as secretary of state. I wish Rex Tillerson well.”Tillerson’s tenure was the among the shortest in U.S. history. It was rocky from the start. Critics in both parties, along with current and former diplomats, had accused him of mismanagement. Still, his ouster leaves Trump’s diplomatic apparatus in flux as he embarks on his high-stakes North Korea diplomacy, presides over multiple wars and attempts to calm ...
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