{"id":134465,"date":"2017-08-27T17:08:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T23:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=134465"},"modified":"2017-08-27T17:08:39","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T23:08:39","slug":"adults-room-try-reassure-us-everything-will-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/27\/adults-room-try-reassure-us-everything-will-fine.html","title":{"rendered":"As the adults in the room try to reassure us that everything will be fine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Tillerson, Trump, and Mattis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two very odd (well, in terms of “normal” US politics) notes from two of the more “mature” senior cabinet members, Tillerson and Mattis.<\/p>\n

First, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, appearing on\u00a0Fox News Sunday<\/em>, where he was asked by Chris Wallace about the UN\u00a0Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination pointing at Charlottesville and Trump’s tepid reaction to the racism and white nationalism on display there as disturbing<\/a>. Emphasis mine.<\/p>\n

WALLACE: Does that make it harder for you to push American values around the world when some foreign leaders question president’s values?<\/p>\n

TILLERSON: Chris, we express America\u2019s values from the State Department. We represent the American people. We represent America\u2019s values, our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment to people the world over. And that message has never changed.<\/p>\n

WALLACE: And when the president gets into the kind of controversy he does and the U.N. committee response the way it does, it seems to say they begin to doubt are\u2014whether we\u2019re living those values.<\/p>\n

TILLERSON: I don\u2019t believe anyone doubts the American people\u2019s values or the commitment of the American government or the government\u2019s agencies to advancing those values and defending those values<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

WALLACE: And the president\u2019s values?<\/p>\n

TILLERSON: The president speaks for himself, Chris<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

WALLACE: Are you separating yourself from that, sir?<\/p>\n

TILLERSON: I\u2019ve spoken\u2014I\u2019ve made my own comments as to our vales as well in a speech I gave to the State Department this past week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Video<\/a> and transcript<\/a>. More of the story here<\/a>. )<\/p>\n

“The president speaks for himself” is a phrase we keep hearing over and over from the White House. Some of the time — like when it comes from whoever is acting as Trump’s press secretary, it means, “I’m not going to try to explain exactly what the President is saying because I don’t want to put words in the President’s mouth and\/or damned if I know.” From others, though, it begins to feel like a distancing in position from the speaker and the President they serve while still respecting the chain of command.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mattis and Tillerson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, we also have informal\u00a0video<\/a> of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, reassuring some troops this past week that they need to “just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Mattis notes in the video that the United States has two “powers” in the world: “the power of intimidation, and that\u2019s you, if someone wants to screw with our families, our country and our allies,” but also “the power of inspiration, and we’ll get the power of inspiration back<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

(More on the story here<\/a>. This was apparently before Trump’s Friday evening diktat<\/em> about transgender members of the military.)<\/p>\n

It’s a weird couple of data points. Both men seem to be acknowledging in their own way that the US image abroad is currently not what it should be, and that conditions at home are likewise, but in vague enough language to avoid actually critiquing the figure at the center of the problem, their boss.<\/p>\n

Part of me thinks of a ship’s captain telling their crew to buck up, keep steady, and depend on the the ship to ride out the storm, she’ll hold together.<\/em>\u00a0Part of me thinks of a battered wife trying to convince their kids that Daddy loves us all very much, he’s just going through a hard patch right now<\/em>. Part of me thinks of the Internet, designed to deal with damage to the system by rerouting and bypassing nodes that are unreliable.<\/p>\n

I don’t know. But this really, still, does not seem normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two very odd (well, in terms of “normal” US politics) notes from two of the more “mature” senior cabinet members, Tillerson and Mattis. First, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, appearing on\u00a0Fox News Sunday, where he was asked by Chris Wallace about the UN\u00a0Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination pointing at Charlottesville and Trump’s … Continue reading “As the adults in the room try to reassure us that everything will be fine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,349,380,740,1071],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha","category-military","category-nationalism-exceptionalism","category-race-racism","category-trump"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/landscape-1489587931-tillersonmattis1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133745,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/28\/will-rex-tillerson-be-the-first-trump-secretary-to-bail.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":0},"title":"Will Rex Tillerson be the first Trump secretary to bail?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 28-Jun-17 10:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We often read about how frustrating DC has been for Donald Trump, a free-wheeling CEO who is used to giving orders and having them executed, to suddenly find himself mired in politics and institutional restraints and checks and balances and all that folderol.But consider poor Rex Tillerson, a CEO of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132288,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/13\/trump-picks-tillerson-for-secretary-of-state.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":1},"title":"Trump picks Tillerson for Secretary of State","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Dec-16 4:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Rex Tillerson sounds like a CEO name, and he is in fact the Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. But he's also Donald Trump's Secretary of State nominee. Some thoughts:The Good- Tillerson knows the globe (i.e., anywhere ExxonMobil does business), and he knows major players around it.- Tillerson is, by all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132912,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/23\/the-multi-cabinet-president.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":2},"title":"The Multi-Cabinet President","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 23-Feb-17 12:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Tillerson's woes are not unique. Every indication is that Trump has both a formal cabinet -- you know, the traditional set of department secretaries, all of them at least somewhat publicly vetted -- and his own internal cabinet of folk that he's pulled in as loyalists and comrades and allies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135051,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/10\/trump-sure-hed-win-iq-test-tillerson.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":3},"title":"Trump is sure he’d win an IQ test against Tillerson","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Oct-17 8:45am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, I'd pay money to watch that one. On the other and, how smart can Tillerson actually be? He agreed to be (and has remained) Secretary of State for someone who has nothing but contempt for the State Dept. Trump suggests he'd top Tillerson in an IQ test after 'moron'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Trump-smug.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":135510,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/04\/rexxing-state-department.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":4},"title":"Rexxing the State Department","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 4-Dec-17 7:40am","format":false,"excerpt":"Why has Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State, \"hollowed out\" so much of the diplomatic corps, leaving position unfilled, eliminating others, forcing folk out with no replacement? Because Trump is going to make things so gosh-darn spiffy around the world that, well, who will need all those diplomats? The eyebrow-raisers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Rex-Tillerson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":135989,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/27\/mr-mattis-build-wall.html","url_meta":{"origin":134465,"position":5},"title":"“Mr. Mattis, build up that wall!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 27-Mar-18 8:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Having been unable to get Mexico to do it, and even unable to get Congress -- even a GOP-majority Congress[1] to actually fund his zany border Wall proposal -- the Donald has lit upon the genius idea of having the Department of Defense build it! After all ... (a) This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/unnamed-3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134468,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134465\/revisions\/134468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}