by Rick Wilson
Tillerson was confirmed with a sigh of relief from Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. He was one of the Axis of Adults, a man who spoke their language and who wasn’t one of the outliers or edge cases inside the already restive White House.
His marching orders at the Start Department represented some of the worst instincts of the nationalist populist mafia at the White House and Trump’s own vast overestimation of his ability to negotiate with foreign leaders and powers. The long-running cliché of the State Department as a branch of government on its own, impervious to reform and to reorganization, wasn’t far from the truth, but its unique, vital, oddball set of needs and roles in the world meant that no president of either party burned it to the ground.
The arsonist cadre around Trump had other ideas. The soft power of the State Department represented a role for America in the world they simply can’t abide: multipolar, internationalist, global in reach and perspective. The neo-isolationist, Build the Wall and Stop the Brown People crowd around Miller, Gorka, Bannon, et al., viewed State as an enemy of their vision of an America with a smaller footprint around the globe. Also, Hillary Clinton had been secretary of state under Obama, so the only rational solution was to nuke Foggy Bottom from orbit.
Tillerson’s first actions were to ensure his frenemies at the White House would let him get on with the work at hand, so the firings in Foggy Bottom began. It was, as the New York Times reported, “a parade of dismissals and early retirements that decimated the State Department’s senior ranks.” As happened in other departments under other secretaries, Tillerson either never had the authority to fill State’s politically appointed positions or lacked the inclination to do so.16
Applying all the dumbest management clichés from the corporate sector, Tillerson clearly had been told that shredding the institution was the order of the day, and he got to work doing just that. One former diplomat wrote:
Tillerson has canceled the incoming class of foreign service officers. This is as if the Navy told all of its incoming Naval Academy officers they weren’t needed. Senior officers have been unceremoniously pushed out. Many saw the writing on the wall and just retired, and many others are now awaiting buyout offers. He has dismissed State’s equivalent of an officer reserve—retired FSOs [foreign service officers], who are often called upon to fill State’s many short-term staffing gaps, have been sent home despite no one to replace them. Office managers are now told three people must depart before they can make one hire.17
No matter how much Tillerson was initially willing to endure of Trump’s erratic nature, pissy sniping, and the chaos in the administration, by the summer of 2017 the honeymoon was over. Tensions arising from Trump’s shoot-from-the-lip style, and particularly his hideous showboating at the National Scout Jamboree, put Rex on edge. It was a July 20, 2017, meeting that led Tillerson to finally snap and commit a Kinsley gaffe, which is Washingtonese for a verbal misstep that states an undeniable truth.
One of the most secure rooms in the country is located in the Pentagon. It’s called the Tank, and it’s the conference room of the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s less imposing than you might think. Unless they’ve remodeled since my days at the Pentagon, it looks like a pretty standard government conference room. On that July night, it was crowded with Trump, Bannon, Priebus, Prince Jared, and senior military leaders desperate to get Trump to focus for five minutes on the trivial things, like America’s national security challenges in a changing world.
This attempt rapidly went off the rails. As Trump and his senior staff were briefed on America’s defense and nuclear posture, Trump insisted on a tenfold increase in our nuclear arsenal. This, of course, would be globally destabilizing, abrogate a number of treaty obligations, and require somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 trillion, which even by Washington standards is real money. At the end of this train wreck of a meeting, and presumably once Trump had left the room, his military leaders sat slack-jawed and stunned and Rex Tillerson said what was on all their minds, “The president is a fucking moron.”18
Well, duh.
Tillerson’s star fell at that point, though even Trump wasn’t stupid enough to lose three Cabinet officials at once. Tillerson for a time was part of the famed Mattis-Tillerson-Mnuchin Suicide Squad, wherein a tacit agreement reportedly existed to quit en masse if one of them was to be fired in some fit of Trumpian caprice.19
With Vice President Mike Pence in as conciliator, Trump and Tillerson papered over their differences for a time, but as with all things Trump, his simmering, juvenile resentments and obsessions meant Tillerson would be sidelined over and over again.
The breaking point came in March 2018. Trump had been rooked by the crafty North Korean despot Kim Jong Un into a face-to-face summit meeting, a goal that the DPRK’s government had been desperate to achieve for decades. It would elevate Kim, solidify his power inside the Hermit Kingdom, and defer further American military action. It was a consequential decision by Trump to agree to the terms of the wee Korean dictator, but agree he did. He did not, however, inform his secretary of state.
The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, but Tillerson soldiered on until, during an official visit to Africa, he made a fateful error. It had to do, you’ll be shocked to learn, with Russia.
On March 4, 2018, a former Russian GRU officer named Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned by a rare Russian nerve agent. Skripal had spied for the British, been caught and imprisoned by Russia, then was traded in a spy swap years later. He’d been living a quiet life in Salisbury, about 90 miles from London. Vladimir Putin, being Vladimir Putin, and feeling empowered by a U.S. president clearly willing to let him run amok, decided to whack Skripal. This did not sit well with the Brits, and Secretary of State Tillerson spoke out in support of our oldest and most important international ally:
We have full confidence in the UK’s investigation and its assessment that Russia was likely responsible for the nerve agent attack that took place in Salisbury last week.
There is never a justification for this type of attack—the attempted murder of a private citizen on the soil of a sovereign nation—and we are outraged that Russia appears to have again engaged in such behavior. From Ukraine to Syria—and now the UK—Russia continues to be an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens.
We agree that those responsible—both those who committed the crime and those who ordered it—must face appropriately serious consequences. We stand in solidarity with our Allies in the United Kingdom and will continue to coordinate closely our responses.20
When you read it, it has the cadences, signifiers, and seriousness of the secretary of state of a serious nation talking about a serious issue. It’s not a tweet, a Breitbart headline, or some professional wrestling kayfabe. It was Tillerson’s last official act.
To most people with a pulse it was pretty obvious the Home Office in Moscow called with some management critiques of Tillerson shortly after his support for the Brits, because Trump fired him within hours of the statement’s release. Contrary to the White House’s assertion, Tillerson had not been fired days before, but instead learned of it from President Passive-Aggressive’s tweet. The connection between a clear-cut critique of Russia in defense of an ally and Tillerson’s firing did not go unnoticed.
His transformation from the CEO of Exxon to a victim of Donald Trump’s foot-stomping outrages and bizarre defenses of Putin and Russia in the space of a little over a year must have left Tillerson disoriented. Whatever his other characteristics may have been, he was a serious person in an administration staffed to the walls with clowns, jokers, borderline personalities, and Trumpalike man-children. You don’t run Exxon for over a decade without a suite of interpersonal, management, and decision-making skills, but in the end those skills were insufficient to protect Rex Tillerson from the curse of Trump.
Tillerson’s depar
ture came during a week of extraordinary chaos, even by Trump standards, but served as a very clear warning shot for other professionals considering service in the Trump White House or administration. If a man like Tillerson could be humiliated, his good name disparaged, his reputation wrecked, and be booted out the door with a tweet, what could lesser mortals expect?
MATTIS SAVE US
The coalition of adults around Trump is small, fragile, and not nearly in control enough. As of May of 2018, Jim Mattis is the only one who still matters.
Presidents traditionally name strong cabinet members, appoint competent people to execute their agendas out in the agencies, and select ambassadors to be the face of the United States abroad. Trump essentially rounded up people from behind the bus station and hoped for the best. With a handful of exceptions—Jim Mattis being at the top of the list—Trump has named the weakest, most ineffective cabinet in generations. At the time of this writing, he has been going through his cabinet like an industrial wood chipper, firing and moving the deck chairs on the Trumptanic with abandon. The singular pillar of sanity, competence, stability, and integrity in the Trump administration is Jim Mattis. As secretary of defense, Mattis is the unique anchor in Trump’s world who seems immune from firing, humiliation, and Trump’s tantrums.
For the good of the nation, let’s hope it stays that way.
Joel Searby, Bill Kristol, and I met secretly with Mattis in the spring of 2016, making a last, desperate bid to find someone—anyone—with the stones and the record to leap into the presidential race, pull an Eisenhower, and save the country from Trump.
Why Mattis? Why would we chase a former general who had no incentive at all to suffer the slings and arrows of a short-term independent presidential run? Because if you went into a lab and said “Build me a clone army of kick-ass American warriors,” they’d fire up the CRISPR and build Jim Mattis. His service, his character, his intellect, and his no-bullshit affect seemed like the perfect remedy for a time when we were facing a test of America’s faith in itself every day.
It was a last-ditch play, but it made sense. A profound faith in mediating institutions helped bind the American dream, but in dozens of polls and focus groups, nearly every American institution—both parties and their leaders, banks, the business world, organized religion, academia, and beyond—is distrusted by the American people. One institution, however, remains at the very top of public ratings of trust and confidence: the military.
In the political world, Eisenhower wasn’t the inevitable or expected choice for 1952, but his positioning against both Robert Taft and Adlai Stevenson based on the universal confidence in his military accomplishments and integrity solidified his candidacy. In a restive postwar moment, Ike didn’t want the job, but he accepted the mission because the country’s future was at stake.
Mattis didn’t want to run for president, but to save the country he took a role in this administration. Today he represents the most vital stabilizing force in that administration, the de facto leader of American foreign and military policy outside the lanes of Trump’s White House cadre. Trump leaves him to his own devices, and we should sleep more soundly for it. He’s the single person in Trump’s administration I hope the curse misses.
Mattis has kept well clear of the White House vortex, determined to face the challenges of Russia, Syria, ISIS, Iran, North Korea, and the rest of the portfolio of dangers with his usual Marine froideur.
The physical comparisons couldn’t be more glaring. Softbelly Donald Trump versus Mattis’s lean, hangdog frame is a comparison of one man who spent a lifetime shoveling Kentucky Fried Chicken and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches down his maw, and one so abstemious he eats two meals a day and rises before dawn to put in five miles of road work. One man answered his nation’s call for four decades of decorated service in the Marine Corps, and one spent his life fighting the battle of Pussy Grabber Ridge. One man has read deeply in strategy, history, military affairs, economics, and the classics; the other can barely grunt out the words on his teleprompter and serves as America’s least intellectually curious and least-read president since Andrew Jackson. (Note to Trump lovers: that’s not a compliment.)
PART THREE
* * *
SURROUNDED BY VILLAINS
The following transcript was provided by Wikileaks in the Fall of 2024.
* * *
– INTERCEPT 1 –
TOP SECRET//SI//ORCON//NOFORN
The following transcript represents the collection of sensitive discussions among senior military and civilian leadership of Russia. Audio quality is variable, as it was collected using a drone-based directional recording system hovering over Mr. Putin’s Black Sea dacha at Krasnodar Krai.
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]
[MACHINE AND HUMAN TRANSLATED]
[SPRITFIRE VOICE MATCH .996 CERTAINTY Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin]
PUTIN: . . . can’t be real. You’re fucking with me.
[SPRITFIRE VOICE MATCH .803 CERTAINTY Igor Valentinovich KOROBOV, Director of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)]
KOROBOV: Vola, you won’t fucking believe these guys. And how easy it was.
PUTIN: He really uses an insecure cell phone? All the time? Fuck your mother. (Translation note: Mr. Putin is using a common Russian expletive, and not directing KOROBOV to fuck his own mother.)
KOROBOV: (laughter) Such luck. An old Android phone. A seventeen-year-old from Donetsk cracked it. We’ve been listening since before he was elected.
PUTIN: Play it again.
[ROOM SOUND. AUDIO BEGINS]
OPERATOR: Please hold for the president.
TRUMP: Hey.
HANNITY: S’up?
TRUMP: Blowing off homework.
HANNITY: That stupid summit? Just wing it. You can cheat off Xi.
TRUMP: Yeah, it’s boring anyway. And Kelly keeps trying to make me read the President’s Daily Brief. Eff that. That’s my Fox & Friends time.
HANNITY: Damn right, Mr. President. The Friendly Friends at Fox & Friends have your back.
TRUMP: So, what’s up with Tucker? I feel like he doesn’t love me as much as you love me.
HANNITY: No one loves you as much as me, Mr. President. In a very straight way that would never bother Mike Pence at all.
TRUMP: (softly) You know, there was only one time at Studio 54 . . .
HANNITY: Sir . . .
TRUMP: Never mind.
HANNITY: Sir, I’m going on the air in thirty seconds.
TRUMP: I’m watching. I’m always watching.
[DRONE OUT OF RANGE. TRANSCRIPT ENDS.]
10
* * *
WELCOME TO HELL
THE NEW TRUMP ESTABLISHMENT AND the legion of Trump fans hate one thing more than Hillary Clinton, more than Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, or Zombie Ted Kennedy—and that hatred burns with a passion hotter than a supernova. It’s a hatred cleaner, sharper, and more immediate than they have for any real or imagined demon on the left.
By now, unless you’ve been living in an underground bunker, you know the thing they hate beyond words and reason is conservatives who won’t bow and take a knee before Trump. For them, the Never Trump movement represents history’s greatest monsters.
They hate us because we’ve done things and know things. Expertise is their Kryptonite. They hate us because we stuck to our guns. They blame us for every loss and forget our roles in the thousand victories that led to Republican and conservative majorities in the House, Senate, and state legislatures. They project their treachery to the cause with our determination to preserve it.
Their sweetest fantasy was that Trump’s New Establishment would overthrow and exile all the Old Establishment and purge the experts, the smart guys, and the operators from the hated Ancien Régime that tried to stop The Donald and save the Republic.
Those of us who had served in prior administrations legitimately hoped for the best, feared for the worst, and stocked up for Schadenfreudeapalooza. We were amply re
warded for our preparations. The spectacular body count in the Trump White House includes firings, disgraces, dismissals, witchcraft trials, panicked flights from the building, and Trump PTSD victims with a dead-eyed stare that chills the soul. In all, 34% of the White House staff was gone in the first year, a number unprecedented in an any country that isn’t run by pirates, drug lords, or cannibal dictators.1 And yes, it gave us more than a bit of pleasure to say we told you so.
From Masters of the Trump Universe to disgraced, unemployed, and unemployable laughingstock is a bad look on anyone, but the personnel meat-grinder of this White House has those of us on the outside looking at them with a weapons-grade case of schadenfreude. Revenge, being best served cold with a nice charcuterie platter and a good Barolo, is delicious.
Let’s indulge, shall we?
Let’s get the firings of people who were trouble for Trump out of the way first. These folks aren’t technically victims of the ETTD curse, but in each case they were a threat to his Trumpcentric kleptocracy and his dreamed of royal court of lackeys, lickspittles, jesters, spittoon holders, and minstrels.
Every administration purges the most senior, most political types from the prior era. The president has every right to name a Cabinet and appoint senior government officials, but because of the Trump team’s flaming ineptitude and inexperience, their early wave of firings was handled with all the subtle delicacy of a monster truck show.
Their purges were, as expected, politically moronic and legally dubious. Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey is the jewel in the stupid crown of his disastrous, tone-deaf, extralegal approach to government. He didn’t just fire his FBI director in a flagrant effort to obstruct justice; he bragged about it to both Lester Holt of NBC News, and to—you might want to sit down for a moment—the Russian ambassador in a private meeting in the Oval Office. This decision would be the single most consequential moment in his early presidency, if only because it was so predictably going to lead to an epic political shitshow, launch the Mueller investigation, and haunt his every waking hour.
