The Daily - Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2018

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Rex Tillerson’s relationship with President Trump was rocky from the start. But no one was more surprised than Mr. Tillerson when he was fired as secretary of state on Tuesday. Mr. Tillerson was the most persistent advocate of opening diplomatic channels with North Korea, a position that put him publicly at odds with his boss. As Mr. Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, we talk to the man who came closest to a deal with Pyongyang about what the current administration can learn from previous attempts. Guests: Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The New York Times; William Perry, a former secretary of defense and one of the few senior U.S. officials to have negotiated directly with the North Koreans. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. His relationship with President Trump was rocky from the start. But in the end, nobody was more surprised that Rex Tillerson was fired than Rex Tillerson. And as Trump prepares to meet with Kim Jong-un without Tillerson, lessons from the man who came closest to a deal with North Korea the last time. It's Wednesday, March 14th.

Rex and I have been talking about this for a long time. We got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things. When you look at the Iran thing... The beginning of the end for Rex Tillerson began last Friday when the Secretary of State was in Africa on an official trip. He got a phone call from the White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly. Kelly told him to cut short the trip and come home. And then he added, without explanation, you may be seeing a tweet. A tweet.

Yes. Mark Landler is a White House reporter for The Times. So the secretary continues with his trip, and then here we are on Tuesday morning. He flies home to Washington, landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 4.30 in the morning, presumably going

to bed, getting an hour or two of sleep. He wakes up, and that tweet finally arrives. And it's a tweet from President Trump in which he says, I'm appointing Mike Pompeo as the new Secretary of State. And he thanks Rex Tillerson for his service. So to be clear, Mark, Rex Tillerson finds out that he's no longer Secretary of State on Twitter. That is correct.

He is shown this tweet by his chief of staff. And that is how he learns the news. by his chief of staff. And that is how he learns the news. Then what happens is the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy issues a statement in which he basically says the secretary of state does not know why he's been terminated and hopes to continue to serve. You know, I wish Rex a lot of good things.

I think he's going to do, I think he's going to be very happy. I think Rex will be much happier now. So by two in the afternoon, the State Department announces that the Secretary of State is going to come to the podium in the State Department briefing room. Afternoon, all. I received a call today from the President of the United States at a little afternoon time from Air Force One. And he delivers this rather mournful farewell speech. What is most important is to ensure an orderly and smooth transition

during a time that the country continues to face significant policy and national security challenges. In which he lists what he believes are his accomplishments as Secretary of State, thanks his staff, thanks the military, thanks the embassy staff around the world, thanks in short everybody except for one person, the President of the United States. God bless all of you. God bless the American people. God bless America. Mark, from everything that you've just described, this seems to have come as a surprise to Rex Tillerson that he was about to be fired. But were you surprised? Was anyone else surprised? Well, like many things in the Trump administration,

one way to think about it is it was shocking, but not surprising. There was a long history of miscommunication, of ill will, of what the White House perceived as insubordination on the part of Rex Tillerson that really went back to the very beginning of his tenure at the State Department. Tillerson came in as the retired CEO of ExxonMobil. He was an enormously self-confident man who carried himself as every inch the CEO. I'm not a politician. Don't plan to be a politician. Have no political aspirations. Don't come to this job with Washington politician skills. That led to clashes with the White House staff,

who he regarded as little more than the help. It also led to clashes with the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who assumed a very big role in foreign policy, a role that Rex Tillerson didn't believe he should have. big role in foreign policy, a role that Rex Tillerson didn't believe he should have. And so then, out of this misunderstanding of how power dynamics worked in the Trump administration, you began to see some important substantive differences over policy. The president tweeted this morning, quote, I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with little Rocket Man. Save your energy, Rex. We'll do what has to be done.

The Secretary of State wanted to pursue engagement with North Korea. He was very famously undercut on a foreign trip by President Trump. It also showed itself in disagreements over how to push back on Russia for its cyber aggression. Tillerson stated several key policy differences with Trump. Notably, he said that he favored maintaining U.S. sanctions against Russia for now and that NATO allies were right to be alarmed by Moscow's growing aggression. It also showed up in the Iran nuclear deal. This is a deal that Rex Tillerson has been fighting to preserve. deal. This is a deal that Rex Tillerson has been fighting to preserve. President Trump, by all accounts, wants to rip it up. And of course, the critical moment and perhaps of all the factors

involved here, the most important one was the famous meeting at the Pentagon. This was last summer. And after the meeting, when the president had left the room, Tillerson reportedly told his colleagues, the president is a moron. Following a stunning report that he had called the president had left the room, Tillerson reportedly told his colleagues the president is a moron. Following a stunning report that he had called the president of the United States a, quote, moron, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the extraordinary step of going public to reaffirm his commitment to the president and to his job. And of course, Rex Tillerson never said that he didn't call the president a moron. That's a very important part of this story. How long does Rex Tillerson survive? The death count has been going for a while.

There are very few places where you can call your boss a moron and survive. So from the moment Rex Tillerson uttered those words, it was obvious that he was a marked man. So it's not just one factor or one conflict here, but is there a central disagreement here, whether it's personal or organizational or ideological, that can explain the breakdown and ultimately the firing? I'd say there's really two reasons. One is personal and it's rooted in Donald Trump, and the other is ideological. On the personal side, after 14 months in office, I think Trump feels more comfortable, has greater self-confidence, and is more insistent on surrounding himself with people with whom he has chemistry, with whom he has rapport,

and with whom he agrees on the major issues. And so I think that if you listen to the way he described the change he made, it was very much about feeling more comfortable with people. So that's on the personal side. On the ideological side, there has been a long-running split in this administration between the so-called globalists and the nationalists. The globalists are more mainstream figures. They believe in free trade. They believe in the value of alliances. They tend to be hawkish on Russia. Rex Tillerson was a standard bearer for the globalists. And his being ousted speaks to how this administration

is being pulled more in a nationalist direction. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. But perhaps the most important one is that Donald Trump is heading into a very important and difficult midterm election. He needs to turn out his supporters. And so he's doubling down on the nationalist message that he ran for office on. I voted on a piece of legislation that will put a significant pause and fundamentally restructure decisions about how the United States government determines whether someone traveling from Syria to the United States should be eligible to come here as a refugee. Where does Mike Pompeo, the new Secretary of State, fit into that globalist versus nationalist

divide in the White House? Well, Mike Pompeo, you know, is a former Tea Party congressman. He has extremely hawkish views on Iran, on North Korea. It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, to get those weapons off of that. But the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today. If you look at Mike Pompeo's record, he has spoken more aggressively about the possibility of regime change in North Korea than anyone in this administration. And as for the regime, I am hopeful we will find a way to separate that regime from this system.

So he really is much less in the category of those who seek alliances, who are about engagement and diplomacy, than his predecessor was. and diplomacy than his predecessor was. It sounds like, Mark, that you're saying that in this ongoing conflict between the globalists, the people who want to engage the world, and the nationalists who favor protectionism and kind of a domestic focus inside this White House, that Tillerson's firing indicates that one side has won out over the other. I think it's a very strong indicator that this White House is shifting heavily in the nationalist direction.

So to that point, I want to ask you about North Korea specifically. What exactly was it about Tillerson's so-called globalist approach that was at odds with President Trump when it came to North Korea? Well, Rex Tillerson was always more open about publicly saying that he was seeking a form of diplomatic engagement with the North Koreans. And he did so even at a fairly early point

in the administration's policy when a lot of the official focus was on pressuring the North Koreans with economic sanctions and even backing up those sanctions with the threat of military force. So at the very moment that the U.S. was trying to pass new sanctions against North Korea and around the time the president began talking fairly darkly about things like fire and fury, you had Rex Tillerson even on a visit to China saying, we're looking to open a channel with the North Koreans, so stay tuned. That put him at odds with the president. The president responded badly. He felt that Rex Tillerson was undercutting the impact of the policy.

But I'm struck by the fact that it was Tillerson who was pushing the president, as a globalist, president as a globalist toward diplomacy with North Korea instead of name-calling and threatening. And then just at the moment when President Trump decides to engage in diplomacy with North Korea with this planned face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un, he fires Tillerson. Well, this is one of the great paradoxes of the news that was announced today. He's actually being forced out just as the president undertakes something he had long advised, that at the very moment that Tillerson looks like he kind of won an internal debate, he wasn't around to savor the victory. Mark, where does this all leave the United States

as President Trump contemplates meeting with Kim Jong-un? It deprives the president of the public face of engagement with North Korea just weeks before this meeting is supposed to take place. Rex Tillerson worked harder, longer, and more visibly to open a diplomatic channel to North Korea than anyone else in the Trump administration. It also deprives the administration of the people around Rex Tillerson who are most invested and immersed in this process. So as the president

looks forward to what is going to be the highest stakes encounter of an American president with a foreign leader in many, many years, he doesn't have the circle of people who are most involved in diplomatic engagement by his side as he goes into that meeting. But now he does have Mike Pompeo by his side, who, as you've explained, fits squarely in the nationalist camp. What does having him as Secretary of State mean for this administration as it heads into this meeting? Well, one thing that's clear is that Mike Pompeo is not as invested in engagement and diplomacy

as Rex Tillerson was. And the reason that's important is because there's a fairly good chance that this meeting is not going to go well, that Kim will disappoint Trump, or Trump will mislead Kim, or there will be a case of expectations not being met. And the period after that is going to be absolutely critical because what the diplomats will want to do is prevent the disappointment of that meeting from causing the U.S. to fall back on the very belligerent language it was using just a few months ago toward North Korea. If you have a secretary of state who has not been invested in the diplomacy, which will be true of Mike Pompeo, you might have a greater

risk of the president and the country falling back on a more militant posture. And so while we're not talking about that development today, that may be one of the more long-term consequences of the turmoil in Washington today. Thank you very much, Mark. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Is denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula still the American policy? And is that what President Trump is going to demand in any meeting with Kim Jong-un? Absolutely. We've been very clear on it. That's the objective and that's what we're going to demand in any meeting with Kim Jong-un. Absolutely. We've been very clear on it. That's the objective, and that's what we're going to accomplish. But let's not forget that the North Koreans did promise something.

They've promised to denuclearize. The president's been very clear on what the objective is here, and that is to get rid of nuclear weapons on the peninsula. The last time we spoke, which was over the summer, you were quite worried that the United States was, in your words, sleepwalking into war with North Korea. Yes. I wonder if you think that this proposed meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un is a step away from that. This is a very important switch in approach where we're talking now about diplomacy

instead of making threats to military actions. I think that's very positive. Nearly two decades ago, Bill Perry was sent to North Korea by President Clinton to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. I'm concerned because the talk seems to be based on the expectation that North Korea will give up all of its nuclear weapons because North Korea stated it was willing to give up its nuclear weapons. And I'm very skeptical that that's going to happen. What do you mean?

It's hard for me to understand why North Korea, after all the huge cost that's incurred in getting to this nuclear arsenal, would be willing to turn around and simply give it up. And I think what they may have in mind is something less than a complete denuclearization, or perhaps a program of denuclearization that stretches out over many years. How does that compare to the situation during the Clinton administration, when you were so deeply involved in the negotiations? Well, when I discussed with them in Pyongyang in 1999, that's what we were discussing, a complete denuclearization. But you understand they didn't have nuclear weapons in those days.

So what we were talking about was them agreeing to and are verifying that they were not moving towards the building of nuclear weapons. So the difference is that the nuclear program is in a much more advanced place. Yes. They now have a nuclear arsenal. We don't know exactly how many weapons are in it, 15, 20, 25. I suppose they tell us they have 15 and they demonstrate the dismantling of 15. How do we know they don't have another 10 in a warehouse or a cave somewhere? So the problem of verifying the dismantlement of a nuclear weapon or warhead is very, very difficult, if not impossible.

So knowing where North Korea is with this nuclear program, what should President Trump demand? What could he get out of these talks with North Korea? I mean, given that they already have a nuclear arsenal, our objective is to contain and deter that arsenal. And so there are many things we could get an agreement, which would give us better confidence of being able to do that. We could get, for example, an agreement to stop testing nuclear weapons, an agreement to stop testing long-range missiles. We can verify those agreements, and those agreements would be worth having.

They're not the same by a long shot of complete denuclearization, but if North Korea continues to have nuclear weapons, then we want to minimize the danger for those weapons. So that's containment. That's the idea of limiting the threat of the nuclear program without eliminating it. In these negotiations, what should the U.S. be willing to give up? What is the absolute most that we should concede in order to get us on a clear path to a contained North Korean nuclear program? We have, in the past, offered to give recognition to North Korea

through an embassy. We have, through our allies, South Korea and Japan, offered very considerable economic incentives and should be willing to offer them again. And finally, the feature here, the real difficult one, is we have considered offering security assurances. North Korea, officials that I've talked with, and I've talked with many of them, believe that the United States has a plan and has the ability to destroy their regime. We may think that's fanciful, but they believe it. And they know we have the capability to do it. And that the only thing that they think that would deter us from doing that is a nuclear deterrence. So we have to ask ourselves, what can we offer them besides economic incentives, besides political incentives?

What can we offer them that would give them that assurance of their survival of the regime? And I don't have a good answer to that question. So it sounds like the most we could hope for is not full denuclearization, but just containment of the North Korean nuclear arsenal. But even that sounds hard to achieve. Right. But we may have set our expectations so high that we cannot back off for something less. My worry is that we may not reach a successful agreement, in which case there'll be many voices in the United States say this proves that diplomacy with North Korea cannot work, and therefore we have to go back

to military threats. So we may end up in a worse position now than we were before. That's what I'm concerned with. So in that sense, this is incredibly risky, because if expectations are too high and they're not met, you suspect that both sides will return to threats. Yes, that's my concern. And we've made the problem for ourselves by setting our expectations too high. Mr. Perry, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. You're very welcome. Here's what else you need to know today.

On Tuesday, President Trump nominated a longtime CIA operative, Gina Haspel, to replace Mike Pompeo as the next director of the CIA. If confirmed by the Senate, Haspel would become the first woman to lead the spy agency. But she is expected to face pointed questions during her confirmation hearings about her role in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. The Times reports that as a CIA officer in 2002, Haspel oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects inside a secret prison in Thailand and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting those interrogations. And voters in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district

headed to the polls tonight for this special election that pitted Republican Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb against each other. Right now, the election is simply too close to call. In a closely watched special election in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the Democratic candidate for Congress, Conor Lamb, held a slim lead over his Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, as of early Wednesday morning. Well,

it took a little longer than we thought, but we did it. The race drew national attention and a visit from President Trump because of its implications for this fall's midterm elections. The district was considered a safe seat for Republicans, who spent more than $10 million to support Saccone, a Trump ally. But the race became surprisingly competitive, in part because of the president's unpopularity. You know I never give up. Shortly before midnight, Saccone told his supporters the election was not over. Never so much, and we're going to keep fighting. Don't give up, and we'll keep it up.

We're going to win it. My pleasure. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.