Rex sets the record straight

When President-elect Donald Trump was searching for his secretary of state, he wanted someone who looked the part: strong, experienced and battle-ready.

Rudy Giuliani wanted the job, but it was a non-starter. Trump even flirted with the possibility of Mitt Romney for a while. But then it didn't seem right, given that Romney had called him a phony and a fraud during the campaign, not to mention that conservatives were appalled at the possibility.

Then, former defense secretary Bob Gates and former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice came to the transition with a great idea: Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, a worldwide conglomerate. Well-known to foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, he was also a former president of the Boy Scouts.

And as Trump was literally casting the part, Tillerson fit the playbill: white-haired, Texas swagger, a self-assured master of the universe.

Boom.

Fourteen months later, he was gone. Fired, no less, in a presidential tweet. The official call from the President came hours later.

This week, he returned to DC -- not to meet with Trump to patch things up, but to be secretly debriefed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Like most secrets in Washington, this one got out: that Tillerson told the members that Putin was more prepared than Trump for their meeting in Hamburg, Germany; that while he was guided by American values, he could not assess whether Trump was; that Jared Kushner freelanced foreign policy with no particular credentials or skill.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, as they say.

So is that why he did it?

"He is so pissed that the President has continued to diss him," says one Tillerson ally. "When he was recruited, he was worried about reporting to a reality talk show host." Turns out, those concerns were real.

But the President, according to this source, "convinced him he would have authority to run foreign policy." And, after all, what a capstone to a long career in business? Irresistible.

Not so much. Almost from Day One, foreign policy seemed to be run out of the West Wing, with Kushner in charge. At the beginning, Tillerson decided to let the politics play itself out: let Kushner do his thing, assuming eventually he would step on his own toes. So Tillerson proceeded to fight his own battles at State (where he was increasingly unpopular, seen as aloof and arrogant) while Kushner held policy meetings at the White House, many of which were held without even a nod to Tillerson.

"Jared wouldn't even invite Rex," says this Tillerson friend.

Increasingly, according to this source, the President began to "resent" what he saw as Tillerson's arrogance, too. "It annoyed him."

Then life got even more complicated. Tillerson found himself at odds with the President on a number of issues. He wanted to remain part of the Paris climate deal; Trump wanted out. He wanted to stay in the Iran nuclear deal; Trump ran from it. He wanted to mediate the blockade of Qatar by the Saudis and other Persian Gulf states; Trump undercut him. He wanted to talk with North Korea; Trump spoke of "fire and fury" and tweeted that Tillerson "is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex..." (PS: Trump ended up summiting with Kim. Twice.)

The coup de grace: a story leaking in which Tillerson called trump a "moron" at an official Pentagon meeting. Five months later, he was gone.

The whole last chapter was painful, says a friend. His wife got so fed up with watching her husband being ridiculed by the President, she went back to Texas.

"His stature and reputational credibility were being attacked every day," says this source. "He didn't know how to handle it. He was so aggravated. He couldn't attack the President because he didn't have the podium."

Nor did he want it. As State Department reporters will tell you, Tillerson ran silent and ran deep. He didn't believe in publicly explaining the incremental progress he was making on certain policy objectives -- ironic, given that it is a tool so often used in diplomacy. He was accustomed to giving earnings reports every year at Exxon, but not much in between. As a result, he was not available to the press, nor was he available to much of the career State Department staff -- which he was intent on reducing.

He had no natural home in the bureaucracy, and none at the White House.

So when he was asked to speak to the bipartisan foreign policy committee privately, he accepted -- probably knowing he could be forced to do so anyway.

"This isn't me going to the media," his ally says he was probably thinking. "I just have to tell the truth. I have to say, hey guys, this is how it really was."

But as this friend points out, there is a lesson to be learned here about Trump: as soon as you make it clear you think you are smarter than Trump, you're history.

And now Tillerson's version of history is being transcribed.