Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is defending Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, President-elect Trump’s pick for secretary of state, amid concerns about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Clearly the CEO of any U.S. company that does business around the world is going to want to be on friendly relationships with the leaders and governments of those countries where they do business,” Gates told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview that aired Sunday.
“But being friendly doesn’t make you friends,” he added.
Gates was reportedly among those instrumental in making Trump aware of Tillerson as a possible choice for secretary of state.
Gates, also a former CIA director, said Tillerson’s connection with Putin is an “asset” for someone who has been nominated to serve as the nation’s top diplomat. But if Tillerson makes it through Senate confirmation hearings, he must do what’s in America’s “best interests,” Gates said.
“After all, if you wanted to show pictures, I hoisted a glass of vodka more than one time with the head of the KGB and it looked like it was friendly if you’d taken a photograph of it. But I guarantee you, we weren’t friends. We were adversaries,” he told Todd.
“You can’t be at each other’s throats 24/7,” he added. “So I think mistaking a picture of somebody lifting a champagne glass or shaking hands with somebody, confusing that with being friends or being closely associated other than in a business sense, I think is a mistake.”
Tillerson was granted the Order of Friendship Award by Putin in 2013 and has faced significant scrutiny for his ties to Russia from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Ahead of Tillerson’s appointment, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the U.S. can’t afford to have “friends of Vladimir” at the State Department, while Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., described the Exxon Mobil CEO’s ties to Russia as a “matter of concern” to him.
