“Unprofessional”
The list of differences the former ExxonMobil CEO has had with the White House includes the decision to backtrack on the Obama Administration’s policy of “strategic patience” with Iran, and Trump’s erratic way of appointing senior officials, including US ambassadors.
Tillerson is also said to be troubled by last week's shakeup of Trump's legal team, the resignations of the presidential press secretary Sean Spicer and the President’s angry rebuke of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Rex Tillerosn reportedly described the president’s public rebuke of Sessions as “unprofessional.”
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was the first Trump appointee to leave the Administration in February, less than a month after taking the job.
It looks like personnel reshuffles are becoming a signature style of the 45th President of the United States, Vladimir Ardayev wrote, adding that with the possible exits of Tillerson and Sessions the Trump team could never be the same again.
Honesty or Treachery?
A onetime Alabama Attorney General and arguably one of the biggest Trump loyalists in the US Senate, Jeff Sessions advised the would-be president on immigration and national security issues and was widely seen as the country’s next Defense Secretary.
However, Sessions fell out of favor with the president when he recused himself in March from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, including probes of alleged Russian interference in the US election.
In an interview with the New York Times, Donald Trump said that he would not have appointed Sessions to the position if he knew Sessions would recuse himself.
Stylistic Differences
White House press secretary Sean Spicer stepped down last Friday over disagreement with President Trump’s appointment of New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as his new communications director.
Spicer said appointing Scaramucci was “a major mistake.”
And still, Spicer’s resignation and the possible exits of Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions still look more like the result of stylistic, rather than political, differences within the Trump Administration whose members are apparently not happy about the way the president manages his government, Vladimir Ardayev wrote.
Meanwhile, the departure of such key Administration figures as Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions could usher in a serious change of course, both in domestic and foreign policy.
Someone with a “pro-Russian background” like Tillerson will hardly become the next Secretary of State, and the new Attorney General will most likely take a much closer look at the Trump team’s alleged ties with Russia, Vladimir Ardayev wrote.
