{"id":305539,"date":"2017-04-27T20:09:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T19:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/one-hundred-days-of-deconstruction-part-3\/"},"modified":"2017-04-27T20:09:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T19:09:37","slug":"one-hundred-days-of-deconstruction-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/one-hundred-days-of-deconstruction-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"One Hundred Days of Deconstruction: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Also see\u00a0<\/strong>Part 1<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Part 2<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a0was a “gift for Putin.”<\/a>\u00a0Indeed he is.<\/p>\n

To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0changed the meeting dates<\/a>\u00a0to suit Tillerson’s schedule, he\u00a0reiterated Trump’s demand<\/a>\u00a0that 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,\u00a0Tillerson posed this unsettling question<\/a>: “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.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Tillerson knew when he took the job that he would preside\u00a0over the marginalization of the State Department<\/a>\u00a0so Trump’s son-in law Jared Kushner could run American foreign policy. In December,\u00a0Kushner met at Trump Tower<\/a>\u00a0with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, at Kislyak’s request, an executive at a\u00a0Russian bank subject of US sanctions over Ukraine<\/a>. In…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Also see\u00a0Part 1\u00a0and\u00a0Part 2. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-305539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}