Ex-secretary of state Rex Tillerson on Monday denied that he tried to undermine President Trump, as former UN ambassador Nikki Haley charged in a new book.
“During my service to our country as the Secretary of State, at no time did I, nor to my direct knowledge did anyone else serving along with me, take any actions to undermine the President,” Tillerson said in a statement to The Washington Post.
“My conversations with the President in the privacy of the Oval Office were always candid, frank, and my recommendations straightforward. Once the President made a decision, we at the State Department undertook our best efforts to implement that decision,” Tillerson said, before dissing Haley for supposedly being out of the loop.
“Ambassador Haley was rarely a participant in my many meetings and is not in a position to know what I may or may not have said to the President. I continue to be proud of my service as our country’s 69th Secretary of State,” Tillerson said.
The statement was Tillerson’s first response to Haley’s description of a White House sitdown in which she said that he and then-chief of staff John Kelly told her that they were seeking ways around an erratic presiden to “save the country.”
Haley wrote that after an Oval Office disagreement over UN funding for Palestinians, Tillerson and Kelly argued to her that she should work with them to divert US policy from what they considered reckless Trump policies.
She refused to play ball, she wrote in the new book, “With All Due Respect.”
Tillerson was ousted by Trump in March 2018 by tweet.
Haley resigned as United Nations ambassador in October 2018 and got a friendly farewell from the president.
Kelly, who left the White House in December 2018, had already responded.
“If by resistance and stalling she means putting a staff process in place … to ensure the [president] knew all the pros and cons of what policy decision he might be contemplating so he could make an informed decision, then guilty as charged,” he said.
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