Sputnik: What do you make of Mr Tillerson being replaced?
Dave Lindorff: You didn’t know when, but you knew it would happen because they didn’t get along at all. A secretary of state he knows called him a moron which isn’t auspicious and he’s disagreed on a number of key things. Trump had undermined Tillerson, when Tillerson was trying to negotiate some kind of breakthrough with the North Koreans and he went behind his back and bombed Assad while Tillerson had just said the US could get along with Assad being in power, it’s been a bad relationship from day one.
This could have been a sudden decision because it’s the way Trump seems to work, I had read he had been called back to help prepare things for the upcoming negotiations with Kim Jong Un, it might have been that. It seems more like he woke up in the morning and decides I’m going to get rid of Tillerson.
Sputnik: What can you tell us about Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel and what will they bring to their new roles?
Dave Lindorff: Pompeo is a pretty hard line right wing guy, with a military background. Tillerson was a corporate executive of one of the largest corporations in the US. He was part of the corporate establishment. Pompeo is outside of that corporate establishment and right wing neo conservative mould.
As far as Haspel goes, I think she’s a career CIA person, she’s been in the CIA for 30 years I think, moving up the ranks as a career employee, so probably less political and more part of the established CIA, whatever that is, it’s a pretty creepy organisation.
Sputnik: Why has there been such a rotation of names and positions in this Trump administration in the White House?
Dave Lindorff: Trump’s whole career has been one of firing people one after another, his management style is if you can call it a style is, first of all he’s from a real estate background, where the companies are very small, they involve a lot of money and a lot of properties but it doesn’t take many people to run it, so he’s basically used to having a few close people around him and doesn’t tolerate much descent, he basically looks for yes men to do what he wants. He runs through people pretty quickly, that’s been his Mo. as a business person and he’s carried it over to the White House.
He’s run through his list of managers and sacked most of them or they’ve quit. He’s got a very small group of people he can pick and choose from as close allies. That’s probably why he went to his CIA director to pick a replacement for Tillerson because he doesn’t have the ability to outside to far after this years’ experience, not many people with professional credentials to be a top diplomat would even want to take the job.
The views and opinions expressed by Dave Lindorff are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.