Washington (CNN) After months of speculation, President Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as his new secretary of state.

Trump praised Pompeo on Tuesday saying he was "always on the same wavelength" -- something that he could not say for his now former chief diplomat Tillerson.

"I have worked with Mike Pompeo for quite some time, tremendous energy, tremendous intellect," Trump told reporters. "We are always on the same wavelength. The relationship has always been good and that is what I need as secretary of state."

Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has grown increasingly close to the President -- a bond largely formed during the President's free-wheeling daily intelligence briefings, which one White House official previously told CNN that Pompeo delivers in person three to four times a week.

After the briefings, Trump frequently asks Pompeo -- who graduated first in his class at the US Military Academy at West Point and went on to Harvard Law School -- to stick around to continue chatting one-on-one, the official said in November as initial rumors that Tillerson could be on the way out began to swirl.

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