With daily "action-packed" headlines of the ongoing developments of the Trump-Russia investigation, it is easy to overlook some of the other reports about the continuous failures of the administration such as when Congress "stomped" the Secretary of State's willingness to put forward Trump's budget proposal where they would slash the State Department's budget by 28 percent. Early in the year, it was reported that the President's draconian budget proposal was an attempt for him to significantly weaken -- among many things, the State Department's budget.
The anti-American Trump administration
The administration has done nothing but show that he wants to weaken the Washington bureaucracy, starting by making Rex Tillerson the Secretary of State. A man who has little interest in maintaining what the Department is supposed to do which is to speak on behalf of the United States. Over the months, he has faced criticism, especially from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who wrote an op-ed that attacked Tillerson for not defending America's values.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went after Tillerson again on June 13, for not defending America's values with the same budget proposal the administration introduced from the beginning. As Bloomberg reported in an article titled: "Senators slam Tillerson for proposed State Department cuts", Sen.
Bob Corker (R-TN) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) specifically questioned where Trump was taking the country and the world with his agenda. Tillerson "reasoned" with the cuts the administration wanted to make by saying that they had to make "hard choices" for a post 9/11 world to prioritize national security.
Tillerson: the ghoul of the State Department
Just as Rex Tillerson had responded to Sen. John McCain's hard criticism, the Secretary of State defended himself in front of the committees saying, essentially, that he didn't feel it was necessary to repeat what America's values were as the message gets in the way of their agenda.
Tillerson had already expressed this view before saying in an interview that he felt that the constant repeat of that message by the State Department over the years has only gotten in the way.
Tillerson has already admitted that he doesn't like to speak with the media to answer for U.S. policy. This has already been the case with the Department's lack of daily press briefings. The Secretary was also put before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the same day as other hearings about the Trump-Russia investigation on the administration were taking place. In fact, during these hearings with Tillerson, there were very few lawmakers present, which is likely similar to how the Trump administration wants the State Department to look like.
