Eleanor Service | Editor
In yet another change to the Trump staffing, the President has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, via Twitter, citing CIA Director Mike Pompeo as his replacement.
This move has been met with a mixture of responses, but even the nature of the termination’s deliverance is up for debate. A spokesman for Tillerson said he only learned he was out of a job when he saw Trump’s tweet thanking him for his service, but that has been widely debated.
As Pompeo’s replacement at the CIA, Trump named Gina Haspel, which would make her the first female director of the CIA, but this is not a popular move.
Haspel is a highly controversial figure, as in late 2001 she was involved in waterboarding two al Qaeda terror suspects three times in a series of brutal torture techniques. This severe human rights violation is the very reason that a potential promotion of hers was actually blocked by a Senator, and until the Trump administration came into power her career was largely seen to be over.
With regards to the reasoning behind Tillerson’s termination, Trump spoke out saying,
“We got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things,” said the president.
“When you look at the Iran deal, I think it’s terrible. I guess he thought it was OK.
“I wanted to either break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently, so we were not really thinking the same.”
“With Mike, Mike Pompeo, we have a very similar thought process. I think it’s going to go very well.
“Rex is a very good man, I like Rex a lot.”
This is yet another in a long list of firings and changes to staffing that Trump has made in recent months, and the seemingly unprofessional nature of Tillerson’s termination has been subject for debate among many. Time will only tell if this new appointment will bring stability, or further disruptions.
