President Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him.
Trump announced via Twitter that Pompeo will do "a fantastic job," and that Gina Haspel will become the new CIA director.
“I look forward to guiding the world’s finest diplomatic corps in formulating and executing the president’s foreign policy,” Pompeo said Tuesday in a statement released by the White House.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Trump asked Tillerson to step aside on Friday, but other reports say the secretary of state learned the news over Twitter. Tillerson thus cut his trip to Africa short to return to Washington. However, State Department spokesman Steve Goldstein said in a statement that Tillerson "did not speak to the President (prior to his firing) and is unaware of the reason."
"The Secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security. He will miss his colleagues at the Department of State and the foreign ministers he has worked with throughout the world," Goldstein said.
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