Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Monday defended President-elect Trump’s consideration of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, by saying his inexperience with government is actually a huge plus.
Gingrich said on Fox News that Tillerson’s lack of any experience in government only offends people in Washington.
“They have this really weird model that says if you’ve never done anything but been a college professor or serve as a bureaucrat or been in Congress, how can we determine that you’re real?” he said.
“Tillerson knows the world,” he said. “He hasn’t been sitting around in some State Department bureaucracy or hanging out in some think tank in Washington.”
“He’s been crisscrossing the world, making money for his stockholders, growing a huge company, creating jobs, and helping the world economy,” Gingrich added. “It seems to me that a guy who can do that, if he takes all those skills and all that knowledge, and he applies it to representing America, to making America great again, he could be absolutely the right person to be secretary of State.”
