Trump promised to be a transformational leader. It wasn’t an idle threat. He has assembled an unprecedented governmental wrecking crew. This is the third installment on Trump’s unique combination of kleptocracy and kakistocracy that is reshaping America in ways that most of voters won’t like.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
Don’t let the symbolic American missile strike on a Syrian airfield, dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” on tunnels in Afghanistan or threats directed at North Korea distract from a central fact: Trump is Putin’s president. Former ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson is a player in the resulting saga. After Trump announced his choice for secretary of state, former Russian Energy Minister Vladimir Milov said that Tillerson was a “gift for Putin.” Indeed he is.
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First, Tillerson announced that he’d miss his initial meeting with all NATO ministers and see Putin before visiting America’s staunchest allies. That move exacerbated strains that Trump had created within the Western alliance. After NATO ministers changed the meeting dates to suit Tillerson’s schedule, he reiterated Trump’s demand that participating countries pay a greater share of NATO’s costs. At a Group of Seven (G-7) foreign ministers meeting of European allies on April 11, Tillerson posed this unsettling question: “Why should US taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?” That was only days after America’s ineffectual missile strike on Syria and tough talk about Russia’s failure to prevent Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Perhaps Tillerson knew when he took the job that he would preside over the marginalization of the State Department so Trump’s son-in law Jared Kushner could run American foreign policy. In December, Kushner met at Trump Tower with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, at Kislyak’s request, an executive at a Russian bank subject of US sanctions over Ukraine. In…