OK, take a deep breath. And then consider this: We are about to inaugurate as president a man who won the election with the active help of Vladimir Putin himself.
But that’s not all. Take another deep breath. Now add this: Knowing that Russia directly intervened to help him become the next president of the United States, what’s Donald Trump’s response? It’s to reward the Kremlin by naming one of Vladimir Putin’s buddies to be the next secretary of state.
If that’s not enough to strike fear in your heart about our nation’s future, I don’t know what is.
Of all the questionable Cabinet appointments Trump has made, nominating ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state is by far the worst – for four reasons.
One: Experience. Tillerson has zero experience in public service or diplomacy. He’s a businessman, not a statesman. Yes, he’s made many deals with many world leaders, all based on what’s good for ExxonMobil’s bottom line. But making business deals is not the same as making statecraft. And what’s good for ExxonMobil is not necessarily good for the United States – or for the planet. In fact, more often, it’s just the opposite.
That’s not based on speculation. That’s based on a huge conflict that already exists over a new oil field in Siberia, where Exxon has negotiated exclusive rights to drill – but which is now on hold because of sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and NATO after Russian troops invaded Ukraine. As chief of Exxon, Tillerson opposed those sanctions. If he can now persuade Trump to lift them, Exxon – of which he owns $218 million in stock – stands to make a mind-boggling $500 billion. No secretary of state has ever taken office with that kind of serious business conflict. At State, will Tillerson be able to distinguish what benefits ExxonMobil from what’s best for the American people?
Two: Climate change. While some give Tillerson credit for supporting the Paris Climate Accords, ExxonMobil, under his leadership, has still been a major funder of climate change denial organizations. According to a July 2016 report by the blog DESMOG, as recently as 2015, Exxon was still bankrolling organizations leading the fight against climate change legislation, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and the American Enterprise Institute – even though, as the Los Angeles Times reports, Exxon scientists have known since the ’80s that climate change is real and man-made.
Tillerson himself has dismissed global warming as merely “an engineering problem,” which we can easily solve without disrupting the extraction of fossil fuels, which is Exxon’s main job. He now joins climate deniers Scott Pruitt at EPA, Rick Perry at Energy and Ryan Zinke at Interior, all working for Donald Trump, the climate denier-in-chief. Planet, beware.
Three: Vladimir Putin. As widely reported, Tillerson has close business and personal ties, stretching back over two decades, with Putin. In 2013, Putin made it official by rewarding the American oil mogul with Russia’s Order of Friendship. Their close personal relationship raises serious questions about how tough Tillerson could be on Putin when it comes to important national security issues like Russia’s carpet-bombing of Syria, seizure of Crimea, occupation of Ukraine and the aforementioned sanctions.
Tillerson’s ties with Russia, coupled with Trump’s praise of Putin as a strong leader, have raised serious concerns among Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Nobody put it more bluntly than Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former presidential candidate and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a secretary of state.”
Four: John Bolton. With zero diplomatic experience himself, Tillerson is going to depend on a strong deputy. There could be no worse than Bolton, who appears to be front-runner for the job, which is weird, because Bolton’s the epitome of the bellicose Republican foreign-policy establishment Trump vowed to rout. Bolton was one of the first to push for war in Iraq (which Trump still pretends to have opposed). He’s called for bombing Iran and Syria. And he recently suggested, with no evidence, that reports of Russia’s interference in the 2016 was a “false flag” operation, where the CIA, not Russia, actually did the dirty work.
It’s rare for the Senate to reject a president-elect’s Cabinet nominee. They’ve done it only once before, in 1989, against John Tower, Bush 41’s choice for secretary of defense. John Tower was the first. Rex Tillerson should be the second.
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