Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned a group of graduating military cadets Wednesday that they risk the very principles of freedom they’ve been trained to defend if they allow their leaders “to conceal the truth” and don’t question “alternative realities.”
“If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no long grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom,” Tillerson told cadets graduating from the Virginia Military Institute Wednesday, according to CNN.
Tillerson added Americans should “demand our pursuit of America’s future be fact-based — not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises.”
“It is also that foundational commitment to truth and facts that binds us to other democratic, like-minded nations, that we Americans will always deal with them from the same set of truths and facts, and it is truth that says to our adversaries, ‘we say what we mean and we mean what we say,'” he said at the event scheduled before Tillerson was dismissed from his post earlier this year.
“When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may see the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America,” he continued.
Tillerson’s comments come after President Trump, who is frequently criticized for stating alleged falsehoods, fired him over Twitter on March 13.
His ouster followed a tumultuous tenure at the State Department, exacerbated by his failed attempts to overhaul its structure and public clashes with Trump over foreign policy.
Trump and Tillerson’s relationship also seemed to sour after reports Tillerson called the president “a moron” in a closed-door Pentagon meeting last spring, remarks Tillerson never explicitly denied.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo officially succeeded Tillerson as the country’s chief diplomat on April 26.
