RUSH: Now, the Drive-By Media today is having a lot of fun with quotes from Rex Tillerson. Rex Tillerson, the former first secretary of state named by Donald Trump, he did an interview. It was at a benefit dinner for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Bob Schieffer, formally Face the Nation, interviewed Tillerson for a — I don\u2019t know what it was for. It might be Face the Nation.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Tillerson unloaded on Trump, and so the Drive-Bys are beside themselves today reporting this. And I just want to tell you before you hear — we\u2019ve got two bites. I just want to tell you this is exactly the kind of thing that was said about Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s. So the first question, at least in our sound bites here, Bob Schieffer says to Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO, “You took over for Lee Raymond.” If there was ever a guy who looked like an Exxon CEO it would be Lee Raymond, and Tillerson a close second. Can you think of a better name for an oil company CEO than Rex Tillerson? At any rate, Bob Schieffer says, “How would you describe Donald Trump?”<\/p>\n
TILLERSON: It was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process oriented ExxonMobil corporation to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn\u2019t like to read, doesn\u2019t read briefing reports, doesn\u2019t like to get into the details of a lot of things but rather just kind of says, “Look, this is what I believe. And you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you\u2019re not going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
RUSH: That is fascinating to me. This is exactly right! Notice the word “undisciplined.” If you don\u2019t live like a CEO — and Trump is a CEO, by the way, of the Trump Organization, self-made CEO. If you don\u2019t live in the disciplined manner that establishment norms say you must, then there\u2019s something wrong with you. And there\u2019s something wrong with somebody undisciplined. What does undisciplined mean?<\/p>\n
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I would submit to you — you\u2019ve heard the news today that the chief of staff, John Kelly, is resigning or being fired or some such thing. And one of the reasons given is that he\u2019s exhausted. You know why he\u2019s exhausted? It\u2019s because nobody can keep up with Trump! You want to talk about discipline! The guy works on maximum four hours of sleep a night. The guy is never idle.<\/p>\n
You want to talk about living a full life. There are a lot of people I\u2019ve known who have lived what I would consider full lives. William F. Buckley was one. George H. W. Bush is another. There are many. And Donald Trump probably is at the top of that list. There simply isn\u2019t anybody to keep up with him. And I think a lot of people in his administration who can\u2019t keep up with him end up saying, “Well, the guy\u2019s out of control, well, the guy\u2019s undisciplined, well, he\u2019s this or that.”<\/p>\n
Donald Trump arrived, the way I hear this Tillerson sound bite, Trump arrives knowing what he wants to do. He doesn\u2019t arrive unsure and he\u2019s not gonna admit that who doesn\u2019t know what to do because he\u2019s not from this world. He\u2019s there, and he has a specific agenda that everybody that elected him knows what it is: Make America Great Again.<\/p>\n
Sadly, he hasn\u2019t done a lot on that agenda. He hasn\u2019t built the wall yet. We haven\u2019t repealed and replaced Obamacare. There\u2019s a lot of things in the Trump agenda that have not happened yet. But that\u2019s not what Tillerson\u2019s talking about. Tillerson\u2019s talking about some guy comes in and says, “This is what I want to happen.” And your typical Washington bureaucrat or CEO bureaucrat will say, \u201cWell, where\u2019s the memo? Where\u2019s the plan? Where\u2019s the blueprint?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said, “There\u2019s no blueprint. Just do it! This is what I want to happen. This is what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, uh, you know, you shouldn\u2019t do it that way.”<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t care what you — just make it happen.\u201d Trump is one of these, this is how he\u2019s worked, \u201cmake it happen.\u201d If he\u2019s talking to Jared, if he\u2019s talking to Trump Jr. or Eric or Ivanka, “This is what I want, make it happen.” That\u2019s not how Washington works. Washington works on things not happening. The whole point of bureaucracy is to not do such that it looks like you\u2019re getting things done. There might not be any need for you after you finish. So everything\u2019s never done. Of course Trump\u2019s gonna have compatibility problems with that.<\/p>\n
And as the CEO of Exxon there\u2019s a board of directors there and Tillerson probably just can\u2019t walk in the office every day and start telling people, \u201cDo this, do that, I want you to do — wait a minute, the board says? I don\u2019t care what the board says, do it.\u201d You can\u2019t do that. But Trump, that\u2019s how he works. So I think being unable to keep up with him, and how old is Trump now, 71? 72? There isn\u2019t anybody, I don\u2019t care how young they are, there is nobody there that can keep up with him. I have no doubt that there are tons of people exhausted.<\/p>\n
So the guy, he goes out, he has a day-long trip somewhere, campaign stop, two or three rallies, gets back to the White House at 10 o\u2019clock and starts tweeting and probably is issuing orders to some of the staff there who had to wait all day \u2019til 10 o\u2019clock for him to get back. He goes to the residence, does what he does, gets two or three hours sleep, gets up, starts tweeting and working at whatever, and he expects that when he needs something done, there\u2019s gonna be somebody there to do it even if they\u2019ve only had two or three to four hours sleep like he has. I submit to you that there aren\u2019t very many people that can keep up with that and particularly in a series of bureaucracies.<\/p>\n
But I know Tillerson has gone farther than that. Tillerson is saying here he doesn\u2019t like to read, he doesn\u2019t read briefing papers. It\u2019s the same thing they said about Reagan. This is almost verbatim. Amiable dunce. \u201cYeah, Reagan\u2019s lazy, Reagan falls asleep at cabinet meetings.\u201d Remember that lie? \u201cReagan doesn\u2019t even know what\u2019s going on. Reagan is so distant, he doesn\u2019t even care. As long as he got his tax cuts and the communists are going away, Reagan doesn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
But you talk to people that were serious in Reagan\u2019s cabinet, you talk to William Bennett about whether Reagan\u2019s lazy or doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. Bennett was education secretary. It\u2019s quite the opposite. So here comes he doesn\u2019t read, he doesn\u2019t read briefing reports, he doesn\u2019t like to get into details of a lot of things. Trump is not a process guy, and Tillerson is. A lot of bureaucrats love the process. The process is more important than the result. The process is what says everything about you. The process, and how deeply intertwined in it you can get, that\u2019s where you show how competent you are and how much you know.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/RexTellerson.png\")
<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s not a results town, sadly. And Trump is a results guy. He says, “Just get it done. You\u2019re secretary of state, you tell \u2019em this.” Tillerson says: I couldn\u2019t tell him that he was wrong. I couldn\u2019t talk him out of it. He told me that I probably would fail trying to talk about \u2013” Well, he was just with somebody very decisive. Bob Schieffer then said, “Well, how did your relationship with Trump go off the rails?”<\/p>\n
TILLERSON: We did not have a common value system. When the president would say, “Here\u2019s what I want to do and here\u2019s how I want to do it,” and I\u2019d have to say to him, \u201cWell, Mr. President I understand what you want to do, but you can\u2019t do it that way. It violates the law, it violates a treaty,\u201d and I think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him, \u201cYou can\u2019t do that and let\u2019s talk about what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
RUSH: So he says that Trump didn\u2019t care if what he wanted to do violated a treaty. Of course, Trump said in his campaign that one of the things he was gonna do was rip up some of these punitively, poorly written treaties that we had no business signing onto in the first place, like the Paris climate accords, which were not a treaty, I understand; they never got to that status. Trump\u2019s now, by the way, tweeting that Macron is begging for Trump to embrace him and show him how to do things now. He says Macron\u2019s a good guy. He realizes the mistake he made here. It\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n
So the Drive-Bys are loving this Tillerson stuff because Tillerson happens to be saying everything they\u2019ve said. Trump doesn\u2019t like to read. He can\u2019t read. He doesn\u2019t have the discipline to read, he doesn\u2019t have the attention span to read, he doesn\u2019t have the intelligence to know what he\u2019s reading, they say, that\u2019s why he doesn\u2019t like to read. He\u2019s not inquisitive. He\u2019s not curious. He doesn\u2019t know what he doesn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I just don\u2019t think very many people have — and Tillerson\u2019s right; I think a lot of people have the ability to relate to the way somebody like Trump goes about his day and gets things done. And it\u2019s very clear here that Trump is not in any way trying to comport to the way the establishment has always done things. Now, you might be saying, “Well, then why did he choose the guy, Rush?\u201d Folks, I know. I\u2019m telling you, if you go back and listen to this program from the early days of the campaign you will remember me saying that some of these staffing decisions puzzled the hell out of me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: People in his administration who can't keep up with him end up saying, "Well, the guy's out of control, well, the guy's undisciplined."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":294100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n