Kirsten Lee Making America Great Again
WASHINGTON — Secretarial assistant of State Male monarch Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White Business firm, co-ordinate to senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the fourth dimension.
The tensions came to a head effectually the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in belatedly July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.
Only days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a "moron," after a July twenty coming together at the Pentagon with members of Trump's national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.
In an unscheduled argument to reporters Wednesday forenoon, Tillerson directly addressed that version of events, saying, "I take never considered leaving this post."

He praised Trump's foreign policy calendar, saying he was part of a team to "brand America great again." But he did not deny calling the president a "moron," declining to address that remark directly and maxim, "I'm not going to deal with fiddling stuff like that."
In a conference Wednesday afternoon, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Tillerson did non employ the discussion "moron" to descibe the president. "The secretary did not use that type of language to speak about the president of the Unites States," Nauert said. "He did not say that."
The president was asked about Tillerson's remarks after touring the University Medical Center in Las Vegas Wed and said, "I am very honored by his comments, it was fake news, it was a totally phony story." Trump added that he has "total confidence in Rex."
While it's unclear if he was enlightened of the incident at the Pentagon, officials said Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is quaternary in line to the presidency, on means to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the stop of the year.
Officials said that the administration, aggress then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would accept struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretarial assistant of his stature parting inside the commencement year of Trump's presidency.

Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately, a White Business firm official said. The official said progress has since been made.
Yet the disputes have not abated. This weekend, tensions spilled out into the open in one case once again when the president seemed to publicly admonish Tillerson on his handling of the crisis with Democratic people's republic of korea.
NBC News spoke with a dozen current and one-time senior administration officials for this commodity, also as others who are close to the president.
Tillerson, who was in Texas for his son's wedding in belatedly July when Trump addressed the Boy Scouts, had threatened not to return to Washington, according to three people with direct noesis of the threats. His discussions with retired Gen. John Kelly, who would before long exist named Trump'southward 2d chief of staff, and Defence Secretarial assistant James Mattis, helped initially to reassure him, four people with direct knowledge of the exchanges said.
Related: Trump Tweets Tillerson 'Wasting His Time' Talking to Due north Korea
After Tillerson'due south return to Washington, Pence arranged a meeting with him, co-ordinate to three officials. During the meeting, Pence gave Tillerson a "pep talk," 1 of these officials said, just also had a message: the secretarial assistant needed to figure out how to move forward inside Trump'due south policy framework.
Kelly and Mattis accept been Tillerson'due south strongest allies in the cabinet. In belatedly July, "they did beg him to stay," a senior administration official said. "They merely wanted stability."
At that fourth dimension, however, Nauert responded to speculation that Tillerson was thinking about resigning past maxim he was "committed to staying" and was "merely taking a trivial time off" in Texas.
Tillerson's acme State Section spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said Tillerson did non consider quitting this by summer. He denied that Tillerson chosen Trump a "moron." Hammond said he was unaware of the details of Tillerson's meetings with Pence.
Hammond said he knew of merely one fourth dimension when the two men discussed topics other than policy: A meeting where Pence asked Tillerson if he idea Nikki Haley, the U.Due south. administrator to the United Nations, was helpful to the administration, or if he was worried nigh the role she was playing. He added that whenever the vice president gives communication on how processes could run more smoothly, the advice is a expert matter.
Hammond besides said that he wouldn't characterize the secretary's conversations with Mattis or Kelly as attempts to convince Tillerson to stay in his position.
In a statement Wednesday, the vice president'south communications director, Jarrod Agen, said "whatever statements" that Pence "questioned Administrator Nikki Haley'southward value" to the administration are "categorically false." He also said that, "at no time" did Pence and Tillerson "ever discuss the prospect of the Secretary's resignation."

A Pentagon official shut to Mattis denied any awareness of a specific conversation about Tillerson's future in the assistants. Merely the official said the ii men speak all the time and have a regular breakfast together.
The White Firm declined to annotate on the record for this story.
Tillerson and Trump clashed over a serial of key foreign policy issues over the summer, including Iran and Qatar. Trump chafed at Tillerson'southward attempts to push button him – privately and publicly – toward decisions that were at odds with his policy positions, according to officials. Hammond said Tillerson has had no policy differences with Trump. "The president'due south policy is his policy," Hammond said.
In Baronial, Trump was furious with Tillerson over his response to a question about the president'south treatment of the racially charged and deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, administration officials said. Trump had said publicly that white nationalists and neo-Nazi sympathizers shared blame for violence with those who came out to protest them.
"The president speaks for himself," Tillerson said at the fourth dimension, when asked on "Fox News Sunday" most Trump'south comments.
Hammond said Trump addressed the consequence with Tillerson in a coming together the next day. He said that during the coming together, Trump congratulated another White House official, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, for his performance on the Sunday news talk shows. Bossert had defended Trump'southward controversial pardon of onetime Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The president, according to Hammond, told Tillerson he was upset with his comments when he saw them the commencement time. But, Hammond said Trump told Tillerson, after watching the interview a second and third time, the president understood that Tillerson was trying to say Trump is the best person to convey what his values are.
Still, the message was clear that Trump wanted Tillerson to defend him more, Hammond said.
The frustrations run both means. Tillerson stunned a handful of senior assistants officials when he called the president a "moron" subsequently a tense two-hour long meeting in a secure room at the Pentagon called "The Tank," according to three officials who were present or briefed on the incident. The July 20 coming together came a day after a coming together in the White Firm Situation Room on Afghanistan policy where Trump rattled his national security advisers by suggesting he might fire the top U.S. commander of the war and comparison the decision-making process on troop levels to the renovation of a high-cease New York eating house, according to participants in the meeting.
It is unclear whether Trump was told of Tillerson'southward outburst later the Pentagon meeting or to what extent the president was briefed on Tillerson's plan to resign before in the twelvemonth.
Tillerson also has complained well-nigh being publicly undermined by the president on the assistants's strange policy agenda, officials said.
Those strains were on display this past weekend when Tillerson said, to the White Firm's surprise, that the U.S. is attempting diplomatic talks with North Korea.
Trump quickly took the contrary position, writing on Twitter "I told Male monarch Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his fourth dimension trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...," using his latest epithet for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"...Relieve your energy Male monarch, we'll do what has to be done!" Trump added in a second tweet.

Asked whether the president still has confidence in Tillerson, White Firm spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Monday that he does.
Trump has already seen an unusually loftier level of turnover in his administration, with the departures of his national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, his main of staff, printing secretary, communications director — twice — his chief strategist, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the acting head of the Justice Department. Concluding Friday Trump accepted the resignation of Tom Cost, the Wellness and Human Services secretary.
One senior administration official described late July as "a tough catamenia of time" for Tillerson. His frustrations appeared to mount in the preceding weeks. Trump publicly undermined Tillerson in June over a dispute between Qatar and other Persian Gulf states, including Kingdom of saudi arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Tillerson had called on the countries to ease their blockade of Qatar, however just hours later Trump said the Saudi-led endeavour was necessary.
Tillerson also pushed Trump to certify in July that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal.
Tillerson has been at odds with Trump on other problems too, arguing confronting sanctions on Venezuela and reportedly suggesting Israel return to the U.S. $75 million in help. Tillerson also is seeking to use the implementation of arms deals Trump struck with Kingdom of saudi arabia and the UAE as leverage to prod the two countries to resolve the dispute with Qatar, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
Administration officials speculate that Tillerson would be succeeded by Haley if Tillerson were to depart.
Tillerson's tenure has been rocky from the start. He was confirmed past a Republican-led Senate on 56-to-43 vote. That represents the most votes against a secretarial assistant of country in Senate history.
Since and so, Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, has been boring to fill up jobs within his section and appears to have alienated officials in the White House, the Cabinet and Congress.
He has become known for being difficult to reach and tends to take his time returning phone calls, administration and congressional officials said. Congressional Republicans balked at his proposed cuts to the State Department budget.
"It'due south hard to get him to return phone calls," a senior Republican congressional aide said of Tillerson. "It's difficult to get him to reply letters."
Hammond said Tillerson is quick to return calls and answer to lawmakers.
Tillerson has clashed with the president's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has a broad portfolio that includes policies in the Middle Due east, officials said.
A second White Firm official downplayed any tensions betwixt Tillerson and Kushner, noting that Kushner'due south efforts on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement are run through the relevant agencies and that a Land Department representative went on his most recent trip to the region.
A 3rd White Business firm official disputed the notion that Tillerson has alienated people in the White House, Chiffonier and Congress.
Trump'southward July 24 speech at the Boy Scouts gathering struck a political tone unusual for the issue, with the president talking virtually his electoral victory and the "cesspool" of Washington. He also joked nearly firing his Health and Homo Services secretarial assistant if congressional Republicans didn't pass a health care bill. The head of the Boy Scouts after apologized for the political tone of the speech.
Tillerson is an Eagle Sentinel and a former president of the Male child Scouts. He had appeared at the gathering just iii days earlier Trump. Hammond, his spokesman, said Tillerson was not upset with Trump's speech. He said Tillerson told him that at the stop of the solar day the scouts are going to remember that the president came to speak at their outcome, and their parents can reply any questions they might accept about the bulletin he delivered.
It's unclear if the latest disagreement between the White House and Tillerson on Democratic people's republic of korea spells an end to the late-July reset.
Nicholas Burns, one-time undersecretary of state for political affairs under President George W. Bush, said Trump "completely undercut Tillerson" with his tweets.
"This was a direct public, I thought, repudiation of what Tillerson said," Burns said. "It feeds the perception that Tillerson does non have a trusting relationship with the president, and that's very harmful."
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/tillerson-s-fury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451
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