Chaos at State

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s frustrations with the White House have been building for months. Last Friday, they exploded.

The normally laconic Texan unloaded on Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to senior State Department posts and for questioning his judgment.

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It was the loudest manifestation yet of how frustrated Tillerson is in his new role. He has complained about White House attempts to push personnel on him; about the president’s tweets; and about the work conditions in a West Wing where he sometimes finds loyalty and competence hard to come by.

  Politico

It really doesn't seem like Tillerson likes his job. I wonder why not.

Tillerson also complained that the White House was leaking damaging information about him to the news media, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Above all, he made clear that he did not want DeStefano’s office to “have any role in staffing” and “expressed frustration that anybody would know better” than he about who should work in his department .

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The episode stunned other White House officials gathered in chief of staff Reince Priebus’ office, leaving them silent as Tillerson raised his voice. In the room with Tillerson and DeStefano were Priebus, top Trump aide Jared Kushner and Margaret Peterlin, the secretary of state’s chief of staff.

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The encounter, described by four people familiar with what happened, was so explosive that Kushner approached Peterlin afterward and told her that Tillerson’s outburst was completely unprofessional.

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“He went into this with a very negative attitude towards the White House,” said a former senior State Department official familiar with his thinking, who recounted that during the transition, Tillerson opposed a candidate proposed by Trump’s team simply on the grounds that Trump’s team was proposing him.

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Many of his proposed nominees have been rejected by DeStefano’s Office of Presidential Personnel either because they are Democrats or because they are Republicans who were critical of Trump during the campaign. Though Brian Hook, the State Department’s director of policy planning, told associates several weeks ago that the department had several people in the pipeline, few have been announced since, and the White House continues to resist Tillerson’s choices.

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Tillerson has also drawn criticism for isolating himself — with the help of Peterlin, his chief of staff — in his office on the State Department’s seventh floor and for excluding many career diplomats from the policymaking process. That has frustrated the White House because even the president’s senior aides have had difficulty reaching him at times.

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Asked about how to lead a large organization during a time of crisis, he told students at his alma mater, the University of Texas, early last year: “You do have to communicate in times like this and you have to be visible.”

He did say "you", not "I".

I wonder if Rex will serve the entire four years.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.