"I am a unifier … and when we unify, there's nobody, nobody, who's going to beat us," said then-Republican candidate for president Donald Trump on March 1, 2016, after he scooped up the nominations in a number of key states on Super Tuesday.
This week had its own "Super Tuesday" that was meant to send a similar message: Trump, now president, decided it was time to put an end to ideological discord inside the White House. For the first time since taking office, he fired one of his cabinet members, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. True to form, Trump did it via Twitter, just as Tillerson was wrapping up a successful visit to Africa, without ever communicating with him directly.
As if that were not enough, Trump's original plan was to fire Tillerson during his visit – in other words, while he was still representing the 45th president of the United States. At the last minute, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly steered Trump away from the radical move. Instead, Kelly called Tillerson in the middle of the night to inform him that that president might soon be speaking out against him.
Given how surprised Tillerson was by his dismissal, there is only one conclusion to be drawn: The man who was supposed to be a master of understatement in the complex world of diplomacy spent many months living in denial, even when the chief of staff hinted that Tillerson and Trump would be parting ways. Tillerson should have realized long ago that his grace period with the president was up and that his firing simply put an official stamp on what was an open secret in Washington: The president was dissatisfied with his secretary of state's performance, mainly because he didn't share Trump's ideological line or his vision of the U.S.'s role in the world.
Of no less weight were Tillerson's attempts to be the "good cop" to the world. He voiced support for the nuclear deal with Iran, as a vital tool to restrain the ayatollahs; he supported the free trade agreements to which the U.S. was a signatory; and he expressed support, albeit restrained, for the Paris Agreement on climate change and a hard line on Russia. In short, while Tillerson wanted a proper, moderate approach to U.S. foreign policy, Trump wanted to be the crazy sheriff who changed the rules. It was a match and a powder keg.
Trump thought he was appointing someone who thought like he did, who came from a similar background (both were heads of large corporations) – a man who would know how to project a spirit of leadership and work as a team. But Trump soon realized that he had brought into his government a classic institutional figure that would only perpetuate the status quo rather than giving Trump victories on the international stage – victory being the most important word in the president's vocabulary.
Trump, who sees himself as a 21st-century version of President Andrew Jackson, fighting on behalf of those who were left behind, couldn't get along with someone who was the furthest thing from a populist. Jackson was the first president to fire one of his cabinet secretaries over differences on policy and this week Trump followed suit. The final straw was apparently his dislike of Tillerson's personality. Tillerson was in Trump's sights from the time he refused to deny that he had called the president a "moron" in front of Pentagon officials. For Trump, contempt for Tillerson was natural because, among other reasons, he "projected weakness" (and according to one report, Trump couldn't stand his Texan accent).
Some would say that Trump just wants to distract attention from his many troubles: the Republicans' loss of momentum ahead of the midterm elections and the scandal over his allegedly paying a porn star to keep mum about their affair. But anyone with half a brain can understand that Tillerson's appointment was an unsuccessful experiment that only harmed the administration's authenticity and caused it to speak in divergent messages.
The sour chords between the White House and the State Department were particularly jarring last weekend, when it became clear that Trump had made the most dramatic move in the history of relations with North Korea by agreeing to meet with the isolated communist dictator Kim Jong Un without even a cursory consult with Tillerson or his advisers. Not only that – Trump's announcement came less than a day after the secretary of state said the time wasn't right for talks with Kim.
Throughout the campaign, Trump understood that the force, even aggression, he unleashed toward his opponents was vital to his emerging victorious, and would overshadow the rest of his own provocative remarks. Now that he is preparing for the most important summit since the Cold War, Trump fired Tillerson as a way of letting Kim know that he is willing to listen and work together, but if anyone dared tease him or undermine him, he won't hesitate to strike with full force. If he could do that to Tillerson, he will certainly be able to do that when facing Kim.
The outcome of Trump's summit with Kim will affect his success in other arenas so it is likely he will do everything he can to ensure that the meeting succeeds. Is Trump overplaying his hand by being willing to meet with Kim already? Trump confounded predictions in November 2016, when he proved that polling models and voting patterns are sometimes irrelevant, especially when it comes to a candidate who is also a brand. What he did to polling guru Nate Silver in the election, Trump will try to do to experts on North Korea who for decades have failed to hold back Pyongyang.
The first president to be elected without any political or military background will try to completely shake up the models that have guided policymakers in dealing with rogue states. The way he sees it, this would be a win-win situation: even if the summit doesn't lead to a breakthrough, he has already won the PR battle with the American audience because he has caused Kim to announce unconditional concessions.
If Trump can get Pyongyang to make a massive cutback to its nuclear infrastructure, he will be remembered as a great president. For Trump, there is no such thing as impersonal relations, and it looks like he is hoping that his relations with Kim will lead the North Korean leader, at some point in the distant future, to give up his nuclear weapons.
A week after Trump and Kim began making history, and two months before Trump is scheduled to inform the world that he is withdrawing the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear deal because its loopholes have not been fixed, the president decided to hand the reins of foreign policy to someone with fire in his eyes, whose very presence can disquiet anyone who wishes America ill. This is why he decided to name ultra-conservative CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson's successor and Pompeo's deputy, Gina Haspel – who did not hesitate to employ controversial methods of interrogation against terrorist operatives – head of the CIA.
Old staffers will leave the administration and new ones will come in. At the end of the day, or the end of four years, the voters will decide whether they are satisfied with the head of the executive branch or not, regardless of any one cabinet secretary or another. This week, Trump's one-man show went into a new act.
