Now that Rex Tillerson is out of the way, it looks like the scary fun is really going to begin. While Tillerson was happily gutting the State Department, his relationship with President Trump was deteriorating for a variety of reasons. Chief among them seemed to be that Ol’ Oilhound Rex wasn’t sufficiently “America First.”
Trump found his man for State in Mike Pompeo, a guy who is the number one all-time top recipient of Koch funding, has called for Edward Snowden to be put to death and has talked about how easy it would be to bomb Iran into oblivion. Pompeo a Tea Partier, who had been heading the CIA, seems like a perfect match for the insanity of Trump administration “diplomacy.”
Tuesday was a busy day: Tillerson was out, Pompeo was in, a former Fox and Friends personality became undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department and Trump named famed torturer and evidence-destroyer Gina Haspel to lead the CIA. (Sigh, it’s enough to make you wish Obama had closed Guantanamo and gone after the George W. Bush-era torture crew.) Today, Trump named a CNBC commentator to head up his economic team. We should not be surprised if the President names Chris Harrison as his new communications director.
Award-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore is a regular contributor to The Progressive.