REX OUT, MIKE IN: THIS IS BAD NEWS

I was not a big fan of Rex Tillerson as U.S. Secretary of State; he had no government diplomatic experience, was very aloof within the agency, and was making drastic cuts. HOWEVER, Rex looks good compared to Mike Pompeo. One thing Rex brought to the job was an understanding that diplomacy should almost always be the first option, and he tried many times to sway Trump away from reactive Trumpism. He did not agree with the president on numerous positions; we know this from Twitter Trump himself. And hey, Rex was spot on when he purportedly called Trump a "fucking moron."

Mike Pompeo is a different breed altogether. He is a dyed-in-the-wool hard-line hawk. He was a Tea Party congressman. He and Trump seem pressed from the same mold. He, like Trump, is against the nuclear deal with Iran, will not give any concessions to the North Koreans in order to advance peace, is anti-trade agreement and anti-immigrant, and agrees with moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem now.

We have learned that Pompeo personally took the morning intelligence briefings to the White House very often and read them to The Donald. It seems the two men have become very close. It would not surprise me if Pompeo was in on the idea to have Trump meet with Kim Jung Un, knowing that Tillerson would probably not agree, and that this was the opening Trump wanted to dump Rex.

(And by the way, unlike so many of the pundits and experts who think a Trump/Kim Jung Un meeting is a good idea, I think it is a really bad idea. Trump is an idiot who knows nothing about Korea (north or south), will not study for the meeting, is not diplomatic, and will immediately go off-script and blow the whole deal; maybe even blow up the whole world!)

Under Mike Pompeo, we can expect the U. S. State Department to become less about diplomacy and more about pushing others around in order to "make America first." I might be wrong about this; I hope I'm wrong. The thought of these two men conspiring on a foreign policy is chilling.

The world of Trump seems bad every day, and gets worse every day.

Sigh.
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