Moreover, it was painful to watch the former ExxonMobil chief abase himself last week in an extraordinary news conference in which he insisted he hadn't threatened to resign. To keep his job, he lavished words of praise on Trump that sounded as if they'd been dictated by the White House. One can only assume Defense Secretary James Mattis begged Tillerson not to quit in the face of looming challenges on North Korea and Iran, and a Trump trip to China in November.