REX TILLERSON/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Nearly nine months after his unceremonious firing by tweet, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is breaking his silence on his time in the Trump administration, venting that he had to repeatedly tell President Donald Trump that what he wanted to do would violate the law. The former ExxonMobil CEO appeared at a fundraiser in Houston on Thursday evening where he sat for a conversation with CBS reporter Bob Schieffer and outlined how Trump had a ‘starkly different’ style from Tillerson, who said the two also did not share a ‘common value system.’ Tillerson said his relationship with Trump took off quickly — the first time he met the future president was the day he asked Tillerson to serve as the nation’s top diplomat — and that impulsiveness marked the rest of his tenure in the White House…The two continued to clash when Trump would test the limits of his executive power and would grow frustrated when Tillerson would inform him that he didn’t have unilateral authority to do something. Tillerson, who once reportedly referred to Trump as a ‘moron’ behind his back, said his downfall may have been his directness with the president in such instances.”
–Caitlin Oprysko, “‘It violates the law’: Tillerson vents about having to repeatedly push back against Trump,” Politico, December 7, 2018 9:28 am