Rex Tillerson recalls extreme frustration with Trump and Kushner during his time in the White House

Of all the departures from the Trump Administration, one of the most bitter was that of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. President Donald Trump denounced the former Exxon Mobile CEO, who he fired, as “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell” in a December 7, 2018 tweet; Tillerson has stressed that Trump was impossible to work with because of, among other things, his aversion to reading. And a newly released and redacted transcript of Tillerson’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May underscores the fact that during his time in the White House, Tillerson was extremely frustrated not only with the president, but also, with his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

During that seven-hour hearing in May, the 67-year-old Tillerson had a lot of complaints about working with Trump in 2017 and early 2018. The president, he complained, often didn’t bother to read briefing materials or memos — and when it came to immigration policy, Trump wanted to do things that were legally questionable.

“The president was on a steep learning curve,” Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to the transcript. “He didn’t know a lot of the legal aspects of the immigration laws or certainly, other aspects of how the government operates within the congressional law-making system and oversight.”

The former secretary of state explained, “I’m not a lawyer; so it wasn’t fair of me to be giving him legal advice. But I knew a bit about immigration laws. And so, on occasion, I would have to say to him, ‘Well, we can’t do it that way.’”

In addition to criticizing Trump on immigration policy during his House Foreign Affairs testimony, Tillerson took Kushner to task over foreign policy. Kushner is not only married to President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump — he is also a White House senior adviser in the Trump Administration — and Tillerson complained that Kushner was terrible about keeping him in the loop on foreign matters.

For example, Tillerson recalled a meeting between Kushner and Mexico’s foreign secretary in a restaurant in Washington, D.C. in which the two of them worked out a “fairly comprehensive plan of action” — and Tillerson learned about the meeting because he happened to be in the same restaurant. Had the restaurant owner not mentioned to him that Kushner and the Mexican foreign secretary were also there, Tillerson recalled, he wouldn’t have found out.

Tillerson also complained that Kushner didn’t keep him in the loop about a May 20, 2017 meeting with Saudi and United Arab Emirate officials as well as former White House Strategist Steve Bannon. When the House Foreign Affairs Committee asked him how he felt about not being kept up to date on that meeting, Tillerson responded, “It makes me angry because I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.”

Kusher’s relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, also came up during the House Foreign Affairs hearing. Tillerson recalled, “I was certainly aware that there was a lot of communication between the two of them. I was aware of occasional trips that had been taken by Mr. Kushner to the kingdom to visit the crown prince.”

Tillerson recalled the shock he felt when, in June 2017, Saudi Arabia along with the UAE and others imposed a blockade on Qatar — and Trump praised the move on Twitter. That was another example of Tillerson feeling that Trump and Kushner hadn’t been keeping him up to date.

“I think (Kushner), you know, he was more of a view that he thought the blockading countries had, you know, had good reason to do what they were doing,” Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “So it’s just one of those things where we took a slightly different view of it.”