Tillerson on Charlottesville: 'The president speaks for himself'

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seemingly distanced himself Sunday morning from President Donald Trump’s widely criticized responses to a deadly white supremacist rally earlier this month in Virginia, telling “Fox News Sunday” that there should be no doubt about the U.S. government’s commitment to long-held values but that “the president speaks for himself.”

Tillerson was asked Sunday about the president’s remarks in Phoenix last week, in which he defended his initial response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, which included a condemnation of “hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides.” At a news conference days later, the president said there had been “very fine people” on both sides of the violent clashes between the white supremacists and the groups gathered to protest their presence.


The president’s response to the Charlottesville rally prompted a rebuke from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which condemned what it called the "failure at the highest political level" to "unequivocally reject and condemn" the hate groups. Tillerson said Sunday that the nation’s commitment to combating discrimination should be without question.

“We express America’s values from the State Department. We represent the American people, we represent America’s values, our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment of people the world over, and that message has never changed,” Tillerson said. “I don't believe anyone doubts the American people's values or the commitment of the American government or the government’s agencies to advancing those values and defending those values.”

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“And the president's values?” Fox anchor Chris Wallace followed up, to which the secretary of state replied: “The president speaks for himself, Chris.”

“Are you separating yourself from that, sir?” Wallace asked.

“I’ve spoken — I’ve made my own comments as to our values as well in a speech I gave to the State Department this past week,” Tillerson said.

The secretary of state also panned a resignation letter from ousted White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka, who wrote that “outside of yourself [Trump], the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months.” Portions of the letter were published on the website The Federalist.

Gorka had been aligned closely with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has been seen as a key architect of the president’s “America First” agenda. He had also been seen as a rival of sorts with so-called “globalists” inside the Trump administration, including Tillerson, top aide Jared Kushner and economic adviser Gary Cohn.

Asked about Gorka’s letter, Tillerson said it was “completely wrong” and that the former aide’s complaints about the removal of any mention of “radical Islamic terrorism” or “radical Islam” from Trump’s speech last week announcing a new strategy in Afghanistan “shows a lack of understanding of the president's broader policy when it comes to protecting Americans at home and abroad from all acts of terrorism.”