CABINET/STATE/TRUMP PEOPLE/REX TILLERSON: “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended himself Sunday [5-14-17] from criticism leveled at him by Sen. John McCain.
The Republican senator wrote in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month that Tillerson’s warning against ‘conditioning our foreign policy too heavily on values’ told oppressed people the world over that the US would not help them if doing so comes in conflict with moves to benefit US interests.
Tillerson said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that the Arizona lawmaker was well within his rights to criticize him and listed what he viewed as the US values that ‘can never change.’
‘America’s values of freedom, of treatment of people, of human dignity, of freedom of expression throughout the world, those are our values,’ the former ExxonMobil CEO said.
But Tillerson reiterated his belief that those values should not determine foreign policy.”
-Eli Watkins, “Rex Tillerson responds to John McCain’s criticism,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 14, 2017 1:38pm