listen to. the environment magazine. long t.w. . this is newsnight from new york fire u.s. president donald trump sacks the secretary of state have just completed a tour of africa a top of his apparently cut short sources suggest he has not been told why he's out of a job. president trump meanwhile has been heaping praise on the man he wants to replace rex tillerson cia director mike. meant that if you.

like you are always going the same way but. relate to the very. very day. welcome to the program u.s. president to donald trump aside the secretary of state rex tillerson the president broke this surprise news on twitter to tell us and for his service cia director mike pompei or has been nominated as the new secretary of state ga the hospital is the president's preference to take over at the c i mr trump has been speaking about the changes. i've worked with mike now for quite some time. from mendis energy tremendous in the last year

always on the same wavelength. the relationship has been very good about what i did as secretary of state. highways rex tillerson well you know by the way who i know very well who i work very closely will be the first woman director of the cia she's an outstanding president also i have got to tell very well so i've gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year and i'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the capital and other things that i want but i think mike pump aoe will be a truly great secretary of state i have total confidence in him and as far as rex tillerson is concerned i very much appreciate his commitment that his service and i wish him well good down there. i think. rex and i have been talking about this for a long time we we got

a long actually quite well but we disagreed on things when you look at the iran deal i think it's terrible i guess he thought it was ok i wanted to see the break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently so we were not really thinking the same with mike my company a we have a very similar thought process i think it's going to go very well rex is a very good man i like rex a lot i really appreciate his commitment to this service and i'll be speaking directly over a long period of time. you. know i really didn't just. yes it's very much for them honestly i made that decision by myself record wasn't i you know in our in this country i made the north korea decision with consultation from many people but i made that decision by myself.

i actually got along well with rex but really it was a different mindset it was a different thank you. i. say it again. i respect his intellect i respect the process that we've all gone through together we have a very good relationship for whatever reason chemistry whatever it is why do people get along i've always right been beginning from day one i got along well with bike bum fail and frankly i get along well with rex do you know i wish rex a lot of good things i think he's going to do i think he's going to be very happy i think rex will be much happier now but i really appreciate his service but with mike we've had a very good chemistry right from the beginning. well

it sounds to me i'm making three to make today it sounds to me like it would be right based on all of the evidence they have i don't know if they've come to a conclusion but she's calling me today you know now we're going to the wall we're going out to the wall we're going to be looking at the prototype which is very important for our country but the reason may is going to be speaking to me today it sounds to me like they believe it was right and i would certainly take that finding is that. yes sure to get the facts straight and we're going to be speaking with the british today we're speaking with rita make today had as. soon as we get the facts straight if we agree with that we will condemn rush zero ever it may be but i have not spoken throughout the course some time today.

we're very happy with the decision by the house intelligence committee saying there was absolutely no collusion with respect to russia. it was a very powerful disease and a very strong decision backed up i understand they're going to be releasing hundreds of pages of proof and evidence but we are very very happy with that this is just it was a powerful decision that left no doubt but i want to thank the house intelligence committee and all of the people that voted a. hard look at it larry kudlow very strongly i don't i'm a long time we don't agree on everything but in this case i think that's good i want to have been deferred to the pinions we agree on most. the dow has come around to believing in tariffs as well so when we got here the way you know i'm renegotiating great deal and without power we wouldn't do nearly as well but larry

is that a friend of mine for a long time he backed the very early in the campaign i think the earliest i think it was one of the original backers he's a very very talented man a good thing. i think larry kudlow has a good jazz i'm also speaking to many others but i think larry has a very good thank you all i'll see you i'll see you at the wall i'll see you at the wall the. president to trump speaking here in the last hour or so so this news of broken initially in the washington post name was something i dumped by tweet from the president let's see how much of the world has been taken by surprise as we have bounced around the world capitals will stop in washington with dr patrick creadon he's senior director asia pacific security program i'm a center for a new american security welcome to d w m did you see this coming.

well i don't want to look too clairvoyant but a couple of weeks ago announced of our staff meeting that this change was coming very soon i happened to be lucky probably more than knowing for sure but all the signs were pointing to the direction that this was now a decision that had been overdue the white house had already decided to take it some time ago and now this was the moment the president chose to take it what were the signs the signs were that in the second year twenty eighteen the trumpet ministration there needed to be a consolidated coherent national security team in which state department was no longer outside the tent but was inside and with issues like north korea looming very large it was very important to strengthen the team rex tillerson just never found his stride either f. or you bottom working with the state department and in diplomacy nor did he find himself in sync with the president as indeed the president has just said so you or

your you viewed rex tillerson as being very much outside the towns and. unfortunately yes i mean there is a man who went to the pentacle of his career but spent you know decades in the oil industry and it turned out that that was not transferable knowledge to rapid public service in state craft and in the plum a c. maybe given more time it would have worked out differently but we didn't really have time in this hectic international relations age that we live in. specialist as a pacific region how does mr tell us and removal and my presumed assumption of the role of change u.s. foreign policy that. well i think my pump indeed has been the same wavelength on north korea policy for instance from day one when he was appointed at the cia my pump a zero having been in congress having been

a distinguished harvard law graduate who could get to the bottom of things when into the agency and said what do we know about north korea what don't we know and he did a root and branch assessment of some of the gaps on north korea so this was day one you can see how this was now going to inform fully the interagency strategy that the trumpet ministration put together last year that strategy is known loosely as maximum pressure and engagement and so they're just on the same wavelength on a very critical issue at a time when there may be the first ever summit meeting between the sitting american president and a member of the kim family mr pompei a husband much more hawkish towards north korea. well he's been in the national security field both cia obviously going back to his distinguished record in the army and at west point in the security business on capitol hill so he naturally focuses on hard national security i think he also

though a doubt so i mean he is a successful politician i just visited wichita a few months ago his home base and he's well loved there because he can reach reach across the aisle he can reach out to people and he understands how to connect and i think kill it out well i think the state department career foreign service officers have been hoping for a reset and they're finally going to get on with my pump aoe. it's interesting that mr trump is making so much of the fact that he. might pump get each other so much on the same wavelength we have seen we have seen this movie before. steve bought and of course very much on mr trump's a wavelength. and now he is out so these things don't last that long. it's a great point you know these are precarious times to be a senior public servant so i'm not saying this lasts forever either but tillerson

and trump never quite caught their stride together we're never quite moving at the same pace in the same way in the same direction and in here at least you're starting off with a man who has really earned the trust of trump on policy issues and does seem to get the president better than rex tillerson and i think he'll adapt to the state department in the seventh floor better than rex tillerson rex tillerson was famously aloof even on the seventh floor people across the hall in the ops center had no idea what he was doing even though they are the front office really for the secretary of the state you will not have that issue with my company oh he's going to be an everybody's office he'll be very able to work the bureaucracy a speculate about what a state department. might look like what might it what do you think its policy is likely to be and what changes will america's allies and enemies say. well i don't think there's any significant policy change coming at the moment so i

think the president has set the policy it's now codified in a national security strategy and i don't think my compare changes the strategy and even it's hammer of the diplomacy that much and rex tillerson i think give him some credit he was often the moderating voice in reaching out to allies around the world in more measured tones he just didn't do enough of it didn't grab sort of the bull by the horns on the policy and really lead i think monk might come here would be a leader that foggy bottom will be a leader of the state department in a in a foreign policy spokesman for the united states in a way that rex tillerson never became i think secondly might come pale can declare victory over the ill fated reorganization that rex tillerson started rex tillerson came in thinking that he was going to reorganize the bureaucracy and somehow get it done quickly anybody could have told him it was not going to happen on his watch

it's just too difficult to change the bureaucracy in a radical way quickly and so might come pale knows how to make things work and i think you'll still move on so i was just in the meeting on north korea policy and i can tell you that every one of the officials i was with from state department for senior officials had the title. with acting the word acting before their names so they're still waiting for this realisation this magic to take place for all of the chips will fall and i think my company can clarify and make cohesive the state department and kind of right the ship the state department is been so eager for strong support on the seventh floor of the head the front office of the state department by the secretary of state might come here will bring that ballast that gravitas that connection to the white house and rex tillerson was not a player at the white house that's how i knew he was leaving a couple weeks ago when i was at the white house it was obvious that he was just not a factor not a player on these key issues and they were looking to head toward

a different kind of department. by. so as we talk about north korea and we've we've we've had this talk about a mean thing that may or may not happen in may with a new had the state department with a more hawkish attitude towards north korea do you expect that meeting still to take place especially given the number of gaps that in the state department at the moment. well i don't see the gaps is really a fundamental problem with staffing a summit meeting but it's still a fair question and i think we don't know is the short answer and i don't know for sure i like to explain what's happened on north korea diplomacy as having gone in stages sort of week by week but if we go back just to november twenty ninth just a few months ago the last i.c.b.m. intercontinental ballistic missile test of north korea looked like the olympics

even were in question if you were in south korea and you were present and of south korea you wondered whether the americans were going to be.