Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson because they disagree with each other at all too much, right?
Maybe not.
Sources who spoke to Reuters say the final reason Trump decided to ditch Tillerson is because Tillerson... agreed with him.
Tillerson had been an early advocate of talks with North Korea to the annoyance of Trump, who wanted to keep applying maximum pressure on Pyongyang before responding to an invitation to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the sources said.
That had led to fear that Tillerson might be too willing to make concessions to North Korea, the sources said.
My interpretation of this is that Trump was upset because talking to North Korea was Tillerson's idea before it was Trump's idea. That's all this is; petty narcissism.
The idea that Tillerson might be "too willing to make concessions" is also absurd given that Trump agreed to meet Kim Jong Un with virtually no preconditions. The White House didn't even directly communicate with the North before announcing a meeting. Trump announced the meeting after hearing that Kim Jon Un's sister conferred a vague desire to meet Trump during a meeting at the Winter Olympics with South Korea's chief national security adviser.
You could choose not to believe this report and accept that Tillerson and Trump simply disagreed each other one too many times, but Trump's petty narcissism is the only universal explanation for his actions.
For example, there are widespread rumors that Trump wants to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with John Bolton, but Bolton would much rather bomb than talk to North Korea. Trump has also replaced chief economic adviser Gary Cohn with Larry Kudlow even though both men disagree with his positions on tariffs.
There's virtually no coherence between Trump's positions, the positions of his advisers, who he hires to be advisers, or which advisers he listens to depending on the hour of the day or the day of the week. None of it makes sense.
Rex Tillerson was not a good secretary of state, but I would posit that we will never see a functional secretary of state under Trump. Mike Pompeo may be confirmed to succeed Tillerson, but he'll also find himself in disfavor with Trump by the end of the year even if he agrees with most of what Trump says.