Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday shared some harsh words about President Donald Trump in an interview at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Asked by Bob Schieffer what he thought about his former boss, Tillerson began by reminding the audience that he had never met Trump prior to becoming the nation's top diplomat.
Trump "acts on his instincts, in some respects it looks like impulsiveness," said Tillerson. "But," he added of the president, "it's not his intent to act on impulse."
Tillerson said that Trump tries to "act on his instincts," which made working for him unusually difficult.
Tillerson did not hold back:
“It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil Corporation, 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, but rather just kind of says, 'Look, this is what I believe, and you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you’re not going to do that.’”
Watch the clip below:
Tillerson told Schieffer that during his time in Trump's Cabinet, he frequently had to stop the president from breaking the law.
Tillerson recalled:
“So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it, and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law. It violates treaty.'"
He continued:
“I’d say ‘Here’s what we can do. We can go back to Congress and get this law changed. And if that’s what you want to do, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ I told him ‘I’m ready to go up there and fight the fight, if that’s what you want to do.’”
Tillerson also said, “there’s no question” that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
The interview spread like wildfire on Twitter, and people are disturbed.
Trump fired Tillerson in March via Twitter, so a presidential meltdown is widely anticipated.
Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post said it is "hard to imagine an official the president had more disdain for than Tillerson."
As the interview went on, Tillerson expressed dismay over the American public's weak grasp of the issues facing our society.
“I will be honest with you," Tillerson said, "it troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues, that they are satisfied with 128 characters.”
Others on social media think there will be more future former Cabinet members who eventually unload on Trump.
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, who has maintained a close relationship with the president, thinks Trump's firing baggage will come back to haunt him in 2020.
Tillerson clashed with Trump for much of his tenure. In July 2017, Tillerson reportedly called Trump a "f*cking moron" following a national security meeting at the Pentagon.
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