As I watched some of the Senate confirmation hearings, my decision to vote for Donald Trump was once again validated. The president-elect has chosen the absolute cream of the crop in every category! As one of the most successful and brilliant business minds on the planet, Trump has exhibited a pragmatism seldom seen in the meretricious selection process of national politics. His choice of Rex Tillerson for secretary of state is pure genius. Tillerson isn't a politician with a record of voting on issues consonant with a particular constituency. Instead, he's very much like the man who nominated him: a man who can bring his vast experience in the practical world of commerce and industry to Washington, where the lack of such expertise has put us in debt to the tune of twenty trillion dollars.
As was expected, the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did everything possible to throw darts at Trump's nominee. After all, they're still in a state of shock and awe that their misbegotten choice for chief was ignominiously dissed by an electorate fed up with the epidemic of corruption being sold to them by an equally crooked mainstream media. Moreover, they're stunned that our country now has a leader who will ferret out these crooks and expose them via the loudest megaphone in the world. Speaking of those vehicles of venality, during his news conference, Trump called out CNN when they promoted a fake news story by BuzzFeed, an equally corrupt media outlet that made false allegations about his alleged "ties" to Russia.
CNN, often referred to as the "Clinton News Network," was among many other similarly biased news agencies that had all but placed the crown on Hillary's head during Election Day coverage. When it became obvious that all those propaganda mills could no longer compete with the good sense of patriotic voters, their capacity to distort the news went into overdrive. When the realization that they couldn't keep The Donald from the presidency finally dawned on them, they decided that the next best thing to do is to make him look unfit for the job by characterizing him as a pawn of Putin. That's laughable on so many levels, not the least of which is that our current president, and his equally feckless secretaries of state, has been such a disaster on foreign policy that one would think they were assisting the former KGB leader to undermine the U.S.
Nevertheless, what we observed from Democrats during the Tillerson hearing is understandable, because we know that the game is called party politics. It's one of the major reasons why voters elected someone from outside that calcified establishment. However, when Senator Marco Rubio began his questioning, we saw a fellow Republican joining his colleagues across the aisle in a frontal assault on his own party's nominee. In what was obviously a fit of personal pique by Trump's formal rival in the GOP primary, Rubio tried to coerce Tillerson into calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal, knowing full well that such an accusation would not be an appropriate utterance for someone about to be confirmed as our most prestigious diplomat around the globe.
If Rubio was able to get that concession from Tillerson, he would severely undermine the secretary of state's ability to deal with effectively with one of the largest countries in the world. "Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?" Rubio asked. Tillerson's response: "I would not use that term." At that, the U.S. senator from Florida began reciting Russia's bombing campaign in Aleppo, Syria, which resulted in many casualties among civilians as well as enemy combatants. Rubio is well aware of the fact that our country has been accused of similar types of bombing raids during wartime. Yet he saw his chance to get back at the guy who made him look foolish during the GOP primary debates when he referred to him as "little Marco." Hence, he continued to push the nominee to make a damning statement about the Russian leader.
Well, Mr. Tillerson was too smart to fall into that trap, so he simply replied that he was not yet privy to the classified info concerning those bombing raids. Therefore, he was unable to make a discernible judgment on the credibility of such. In a particularly snarky comment, Little Marco said: "None of this is classified, Mr. Tillerson; these people are dead." The nominee deftly replied: "Your question was [concerning] people who were responsible for that; I'm not disputing that these people are dead."
Senator Rubio lived up to the tag put on him by the president-elect. Conversely, Rex Tillerson is a towering choice for secretary of state. He will bring an extraordinarily broad international business experience and a profound grasp of the global economy to the post. It will be refreshing indeed to have someone represent the interest and values of the United States with the level of resolve a great country deserves.
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