Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson addresses the World Gas Conference in Paris in 2015. Tillerson is reportedly U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's top pick for secretary of state. (Eric Piermont/AFP) To a cabinet already stocked with wealthy business leaders who have relatively little experience in government jobs, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to add Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, as his choice for secretary of state, the Post reported over the weekend. If he is nominated -- and confirmed -- Tillerson, who as CEO of the oil giant has built relationships with world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, would be the first secretary of state in modern history to have no public sector experience. Yet as CEO of ExxonMobil, where he has spent his entire career, Tillerson has run a company so large and powerful that New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll, who wrote a book about ExxonMobil in 2012, called it "a parallel quasi-state." Writing in that publication on Sunday, Coll notes that at ExxonMobil, "Tillerson has no doubt honed many of the day-to-day skills that a Secretary of State must exercise: absorbing complex political analysis, evaluating foreign leaders, attending ceremonial events, and negotiating with friends and adversaries." But he also questions how someone who led a company he calls "devoted firmly to shareholder interests and possessed of its own foreign policy" would "embrace a vision of America's place in the world that promotes ideas for their own sake, emphatically privileging national interests over private ones." According to The Post's Steven Mufson and Philip Rucker, sources close to Trump's transition said the president-elect had settled on Tillerson because of his management skills, his relationships with foreign leaders and the gravitas he projects. In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump called Tillerson "much more than a business executive; he's a world-class player," and noted that "he does massive deals in Russia ... for the company, not for himself." The potential choice of Tillerson, who received an honor from the Kremlin known as the Order of Friendship and developed a working relationship with Putin through his company's business in Russia, prompted Democrats to ring alarm bells and some Republicans to question the choice. It comes amid a Washington Post report Friday that a CIA assessment concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the presidency. |
