‘Dumb as a rock’ & ‘lazy as hell’: Trump destroys Rex Tillerson in tweet praising Pompeo
US President Donald Trump lashed out at his first secretary of state, calling Rex Tillerson dumb and lazy after an interview in which Tillerson complained about his time at the State Department.
“Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.”
Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018
Just two years ago, however, Trump was calling Tillerson - CEO of ExxonMobil at the time - “one of the truly great business leaders of the world.”
I have chosen one of the truly great business leaders of the world, Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, to be Secretary of State.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2016
What happened? Most likely, Tillerson’s interview with CBS, which aired Thursday, in which he bad-mouthed his former boss as someone who acts on instinct and doesn’t like to read.
“What’s challenging for me ... is to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things,” Tillerson told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer. “We are starkly different in our styles, we did not have a common value system.”
“I’d have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you wanna do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law, it violates treaty.’ He got really frustrated,” Tillerson said. “I think he grew tired of me being the guy who told him, ‘You can’t do that.’”
Trump sacked Tillerson in March this year, replacing him with Pompeo, the former congressman from Kansas who was heading the CIA at the time.
The reshuffle at Foggy Bottom came almost six months after NBC reported that Tillerson had called Trump a “f***ing moron” at a meeting in 2017, prompting the president to tweet about IQ tests. While Tillerson did not explicitly deny the quote, he rejected NBC’s claims that he had offered to resign, only to be talked out of it by Vice-President Mike Pence. Trump himself called the NBC story “fake news.”
Tillerson dismissed another whisper campaign about his impending firing, in December last year, as “laughable,” and State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert insisted that there were no plans to fire the secretary.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
