RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning his decision to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his plans to replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo: “Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!” According to NBC News, Mr. Tillerson learned of the president’s decision from the tweet, although White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had reportedly told Mr. Tillerson last Friday that the president planned to ask the Secretary of State to “step aside.”

Secretary of State Tillerson said his goodbyes without anything positive to say about the president. His official final day in office will be March 31st.

The State Department’s press office said in a prepared statement that Secretary of State Tillerson “had every intention of remaining because of the tangible progress made on critical national security issues. The Secretary did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling and not to be regretted.”

President Trump told reporters that he had made the decision to remove Mr. Tillerson because they had “a different mindset.”

The abrupt firing Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson follows months of infighting between the State Department and White House over efforts by Tillerson to save the Iran nuclear deal and ignore President Donald Trump’s demands that the agreement be fixed or completely scrapped by the United States, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

In the weeks leading up to Tillerson’s departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile program and continued nuclear research.

While Trump had prescribed a range of fixes that he viewed as tightening the deal’s flaws, Tillerson recently caved to European pressure to walk back these demands and appease Tehran while preserving the deal, according to these sources. The Free Beacon first disclosed this tension last week in a wide-ranging report.

White House allies warned Tillerson’s senior staff for weeks that efforts to save the nuclear deal and balk on Trump’s key demands regarding the deal could cost Tillerson his job, a warning that became reality Tuesday when Trump fired Tillerson by tweet.

Tillerson will be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former member of Congress who established a record as being tough on Iran and echoing many of the policies called for by Trump. Insiders expect Pompeo to take a much harder line on the nuclear deal and pursue many of the fixes advocated by Trump, such as outlawing Iran’s ballistic missile program and instating fierce repercussions for any future breach.

“Our constitutional republic is being shaken to its foundation by corrupt unelected officials like James Clapper who conspire to undermine a duly elected president.”

As the House Intelligence Committee on Monday announced its findings that there was no collusion between Team Trump and Russia. More evidence of the collusion between Deep State swamp creatures and a disloyal media to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump was also revealed. James Clapper has been exposed as both a perjurer and a criminal leaker of classified information to the press.

The cynicism of Americans regarding integrity and accountability in government grew as swamp thing James Clapper avoided his part of the bog being drained. The statute of limitations for prosecuting his perjury before Congress regarding surveillance of Americans expired on Monday:

Clapper, director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, admitted giving “clearly erroneous” testimony about mass surveillance in March 2013, and offered differing explanations for why.

Two criminal statutes that cover lying to Congress have five-year statutes of limitations, establishing a Monday deadline to charge Clapper, who in retirement has emerged as a leading critic of President Trump.

The under-oath untruth was exposed by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who sparked national debate on surveillance policy with leaks to the press.

Many members of Congress, mostly Republicans supportive of new limits on electronic surveillance, called for Clapper to be prosecuted as the deadline neared, saying unpunished perjury jeopardizes the ability of Congress to perform oversight.

From Wisconsin to Warsaw, voters around the world have been expressing their deep dissatisfaction with political elites. Yet establishment politicians have preferred to rely on a politically convenient narrative to explain away the populist explosion: Russian interference.

Russian meddling is a real and serious problem. Much more could be done to address it, from naming and punishing those responsible to improving trans-Atlantic efforts to combat it. But the obsession over Russia, sparked by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, distracts attention from the real causes of populist anger.

Take Italy. Two euroskeptic movements, 5 Star and Northern League, made a strong showing in the general election earlier this month. The result proved vexing to some. “Italy joins long list of elections influenced by Russia,” tweeted Samantha Power, President Obama’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “Sputnik will do what Sputnik does.”

What nonsense. There are plenty of plausible explanations for the result that don’t lead back to Vladimir Putin. Italy’s youth unemployment rate, the third highest in the European Union, stands at 31.5%. The last time Italy’s economic growth topped 2% was 2006. It has struggled to reach 1% since 2010. More than 150,000 African and Middle Eastern refugees landed on Italy’s shores in 2015 alone. Transparency International last year ranked Italy 54th in corruption perceptions. Namibia ranks higher.

Those factors alone ought to be enough to explain Italy’s populist turn, though populism is hardly a new phenomenon in postwar Italy. And Italy isn’t alone. Russian bots supposedly were behind the Brexit campaign, America’s #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag and the Catalan independence movement. That’s not to mention the credit Russia is given for all the racial tension in the U.S. and the political clashes that follow school shootings like the one last month in Parkland, Fla.

Russian interference, apparently, can do almost anything. It seems income stagnation, unbridled immigration, economic inequality, automation and the opioid crisis don’t influence voters as much as a few poorly produced memes. CONTINUE AT SITE

The shock of losing the Presidency to Donald Trump has to be mind-blowing, but Hillary Clinton keeps offering evidence for why she may have been the only Democrat in 2016 who could have managed the feat.

Mrs. Clinton provided the latest demonstration on a visit to India in which she was asked to explain her loss. She blamed the “backwards” parts of America where “you didn’t like black people getting rights; you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs; you don’t want to, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are.”

This a reprise of her famous “deplorables” crack from the campaign trail, but she didn’t stop there. She also complained about “married white women” who supported Mr. Trump because they were too weak to stand up to “a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

Mrs. Clinton was supposed to be the first female President who rose as the feminist champion for the aspirations of all American women. Yet it turns out she really believes that any woman who voted against her must have been a mental or emotional prisoner of some man, trapped in a kind of political purdah.

Democrats may think Mr. Trump is unfit to be President, but maybe they should take responsibility for nominating a candidate who had such contempt for so many Americans.