Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has a "difficult" job under President Donald Trump, former top diplomat Condoleezza Rice said Sunday, but she believes he's doing his best.
"I think that Rex Tillerson, in a usual administration with an unusual president, who has never been in government before, is really doing a very good job on the diplomacy and is just putting his head down and going about that work," Rice told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."
She gave Tillerson a great deal of credit for his work to make sure the United States diplomatic ties with Russia remain intact, and for working to isolate North Korea, but she does believe Trump's tweets and other ways he communicates are making the former Exxon/Mobil CEO's job tougher.
"I think what's hard is to get up every day and not know what the president said at 3 o'clock in the morning," Rice said. "That would be exceedingly difficult."
Rice has voiced her concerns about Trump in the past, including calling for him to withdraw from the race after a damaging 2005 Access Hollywood tape revealing him making sexual comments about women was released just before the 2016 general election.
She said Sunday she does respect Trump's office, and commented that many of her own former colleagues serve in his administration.
However, Rice told Zakaria that some of the language coming out of the White House makes her "uncomfortable."
"I do recognize that it is a different circumstance with social media with a president who has never been in government before," said Rice. "But we as Americans have to also respect our system, and I think our system is working quite well."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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