Trump invites Senate clash with Tillerson State nomination

But the prospect of Tillerson’s nomination sparked immediate concern on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are already grappling with intelligence assessments suggesting Russian Federation interfered with the USA presidential election to help Trump. Sen.

With Democrats and some Republicans expressing doubt about the ExxonMobil CEO, there is a chance that the 64-year-old Texan might not get past the committee confirmation hearings that lead to a vote on the Senate floor. And House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in statement that a House Intelligence Committee probe of cyberthreats by other countries and terrorist groups “will continue and has my support”.

If confirmed by the Senate, Tillerson’s test will be whether his corporate deal-making skills translate into the delicate world of global diplomacy.

Food & Water Watch head Wenonah Hauter said that the prospect of Tillerson at the head of US foreign policy “is a frightful prospect for our planet”.

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson has met President-elect Donald Trump amid growing speculation that he is being considered for U.S. secretary of state.

Tillerson did come out in favour of a carbon tax in 2009, which his predecessor Lee Raymond fought.

Tillerson recently rose as one of the top contenders for secretary of state, and his reported nomination comes on the heels of former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani taking himself out of consideration for the position. He called him “a strong man, a tough man”.

And Sino-US relations are strained after a series of moves by Trump that provoked China, America’s biggest single goods trading partner and the holder of nearly a trillion dollars in US government debt.

The appearance caps a week of rolling out Cabinet picks, holding “thank you” rallies in North Carolina, Iowa and MI, and trying to cement his incoming Senate majority with Saturday’s runoff election in Louisiana.

Over his decades at the company, Tillerson’s work took him all over the world, including to Yemen and Russian Federation.

Early in the company’s efforts to gain access to Russian market, Tillerson cut a deal with state-owned Rosneft.

So far, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks have mostly been either multimillionaire and billionaire executives or retired generals. Schiff tweeted, referring to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.

Exxon Mobil said its board would meet soon regarding its transition.

When John Kerry became secretary of state almost four years ago, he and his wife, Teresa Heinz, divested from a long list of companies to avoid any possibility of a conflict of interest. As secretary of state, Tillerson would represent the U.S. in worldwide climate talks, such as the 2015 Paris agreement signed by 200 nations.

Trump appointed Stephen Miller, a top policy aide during the campaign, to be his senior adviser for policy. But there’s another major reason for the U.S. Senate to keep ExxonMobil Corp.

“Tillerson to me represents a realpolitik choice”, Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street”.

But during a media telebriefing on Monday, environmental groups discussed one potential “silver lining”: If Tillerson accepts Trump’s Cabinet invitation, he must testify before Congress ― which will likely question him not only about his ties to Russian Federation, but also his company’s decades-long, well-documented climate change cover-up.

A group of US state attorneys general is investigating Exxon for allegedly misleading the public about climate change and some environmental groups are alarmed Exxon’s CEO could be America’s top diplomat.

While his predecessor was a firm skeptic about the link between fossil fuel combustion and climate change, Tillerson has softened the company’s position on the issue, even if he’s unconvinced by the most dire predictions of the consequences.

Environmentalists, already alarmed by Trump’s nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt – a fierce opponent of climate change regulation of power plants – to head the Environmental Protection Agency, are mobilizing against a potential Tillerson nomination. “It is extremely complicated”, he told the hearing.