President Donald Trump listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi speaks during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is at right. | AP Photo Tillerson: 'I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job.'

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “didn’t want this job,” according to a profile published Wednesday in the Independent Journal Review, and only accepted it on the urging of his wife.

The remarks, which Tillerson delivered during a multi-part interview that took place over the course of his recent trip to Asia, were a starker version of introductory ones he made upon his arrival at the State Department following his confirmation.


“I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job,” Tillerson told IJR’s Erin McPike, the lone reporter to accompany the secretary of state on his trip to Asia, who noted that the secretary does not appear to harbor regrets about accepting the job. “My wife told me I’m supposed to do this.”

Tillerson said he was “stunned” when President Donald Trump asked him to be secretary of state but that his wife was not. The secretary had planned to retire from his previous job as CEO of Exxon Mobil this month, but when offered the job as America’s top diplomat, Tillerson’s wife said “I told you God’s not through with you.”

Asked about criticism directed his way over the decision to bring just a single reporter on his first major trip to Asia, Tillerson said, “We’ve got a lot going on inside the State Department, and we’re not talking about it until we’re ready, and that’s driving a lot of people nuts.” He said the more public practices of former President Barack Obama’s administration were a “huge mistake and put them at a huge disadvantage.”

Tillerson also defended Trump’s willingness to question NATO and the U.S. commitment to it, a stance that has been criticized by prominent members of both parties but that the secretary claimed has also gotten results. The president has been insistent that other member nations meet their commitment to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, something past administrations tried and failed to do.

“They were so polite about how they asked,” Tillerson said of Trump’s predecessors. “The president said it in a way that embarrassed them. … He embarrassed them into increasing their spending.”