Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly believes that President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was responsible for pushing rumors of his long-anticipated ouster.
The former top diplomat suggested in an interview with The New Yorker that he knows who was behind long-simmering rumors that he would be fired, but did not provide a name. Multiple sources, however, told the magazine that he believes it is Kushner.
“I know who it is,” Tillerson told The New Yorker. “I know who it is. And they know I know.”
{mosads}
Tillerson’s comments came after he was unceremoniously fired by Trump in March via Twitter. Rumors of his pending dismissal had circulated for months prior to that.
His firing came amid particularly high tensions with Kushner, who has been charged with brokering a peace plan between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The tensions, according to The New Yorker, were manifested in a bitter public relations fight.
For example, after Tillerson secured some of the funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley had threatened to withhold, news items discussing the potential negative consequences of the move for Middle East peace began to emerge.
A State Department official blamed Kushner for planting those items, The New Yorker reported.
Still, Tillerson insisted that there was no animosity with Kushner over his foreign policy portfolio. He said that it had been understood since the early days of Trump’s presidency that Kushner would oversee Middle East peace.
“It was pretty clear in the beginning the president wanted him to work on the Middle East peace process, and so we carved that out.” Tillerson said. “That’s what the president wanted to do.”