Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told House panel he had to condense issues for inattentive Trump

https://news.yahoo.com/apos-president-steep-learning-curve-170027051.html

Deirdre Shesgreen
,USA TODAY•June 28, 2019


Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a House committee that he had to condense foreign policy issues for an inattentive President Donald Trump and faced repeated diplomatic end-runs by Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law.

According to a newly released transcript of the closed-door interview in May, Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Trump’s refusal to read briefing papers and policy documents prompted Tillerson to make short presentations and try to focus on one point in his meetings with the president.

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Tillerson defended the decision to allow Trump to meet at length with Putin on July 7, 2017, when the two leaders were in Germany for a broader summit of world leaders, and to limit other participants. Besides Trump and Putin, only Tillerson, Russia’s foreign minister and two interpreters attended the session.

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Putin engaged in a detailed discussion of items on a “list of irritants” that Tillerson and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had drawn up – items that had caused friction between the two countries and that they hoped to address to improve relations.

Tillerson said the list was mostly classified, but he disclosed one thing: Russia wanted to regain control of two diplomatic compounds the Obama administration had seized in New York and Maryland, in response to the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

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