Trump Taps Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State

The citation said it was for his “significant contribution to strengthening cooperation in the energy sector”. If all nine Democrats on the panel vote against Tillerson, they would need only one of the committee’s 10 Republicans to join them to prevent the ExxonMobil CEO’s nomination from moving to the full Senate for a vote. “Putin likes that personality type – not exactly the Trump personality, but the personality that quietly projects power, discipline, control”. Trump made his displeasure clear to Priebus, who has begun outreach to some of the people who worked on Trump’s campaign from the start. In July he told Fox News that European and American sanctions against Russian Federation to punish the 2014 invasion of Ukraine were too weak. “We understand the situation”, Tillerson said of the Kremlin when asked at an oil analysts’ meeting this year about whether Exxon would resume work in Russian Federation if sanctions were lifted.

President-elect Donald Trump is partaking in one the nation’s most storied football rivalries, saluting USA troops at the annual Army-Navy game on Saturday as he prepares to enter the White House.

As Senators from both parties have vehemently called for vigorous investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency assessment of Russian interference, many – like Florida Senator Marco Rubio – have called out Tillerson’s ties to the Kremlin directly.

Trump, a Republican, is due to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama on January 20.

“Well, if he understands it he sympathizes with Putin”, Peters said.

They described the meeting as a chance to catch up. On Capitol Hill, leading Republicans have already expressed anxieties about him as they contend with intelligence assessments saying Russian Federation interfered with the US presidential election to help Trump.

In a bid to fend off Republican opposition, Trump’s team is lining up support for Tillerson from high-profile national security experts.

“Should Putin be pleased?” “It beats the heck out of Obama going after him all day”.

But Tillerson’s popularity in Moscow is being seen as a liability by a growing chorus of lawmakers in Washington. Over the weekend, Donald Trump praised Tillerson but would not confirm the choice.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has expressed trepidation over Tillerson’s purported nomination.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump had nominated Rex Tillerson as the president-elect’s Secretary of State. As ExxonMobil’s head, Tillerson maintained close ties with Russian Federation and was awarded by President Vladimir Putin with the Order of Friendship in 2013, an honor for a foreign citizen.

According to the Wall Street Journal, sources said Tillerson’s initial emergence as a candidate for the country’s top diplomat surprised senior Exxon officials, including Tillerson himself. Exxon steadily expanded its Russian business even as its rivals faced expropriation and regulatory obstacles, and in 2013 Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship on Tillerson. Republicans now hold 52 seats in the chamber, and if Democrats unify against him, Tillerson will need all but two of them to vote for him with Vice President-elect Pence breaking the tie. John McCain said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

“As part of his duties as head of one of the biggest oil companies, he had contacts with our representatives”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said on a conference call with reporters.

On Friday, the Trump transition team announced that one of the leading candidates for the top diplomatic post, Rudy Giuliani, took himself out of the running on November 29. “I don’t want to prejudge the guy, but that’s a bit unnerving”.