Condoleezza Rice And Rex Tillerson On Being Secretary Of State - Full Interview
2,624 views · Published 18 January 2018 · 22:09 · Indexed 10 October 2026
Channel: The Uptake by Bridgemakers · 2018 · News & Politics
Former U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice interviews Secretary Tillerson at the Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Partial transcript: SECRETARY RICE: I want to ask you a question first about being Secretary of State. It’s kind of a hard job, isn’t it? (Laughter.) SECRETARY TILLERSON: It’s – yeah, it’s a little different. (Laughter.) SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. (Laughter). So, when I was secretary, I’d get up in the morning, and there were some things I’d see on my calendar, and I’d think, “Oh good, I’m going to get to do that,” and then there were some things that I’d would think, “I’ll just – maybe I’ll just go back to bed.” What do you like about the job, and what do you find most challenging? SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, what I like most about the job is what I’ve always enjoyed throughout my career, and it’s the quality of the people you have the privilege to work with every day. And what I’ll say about the people in the State Department, the career people as well as the political appointees: These are extraordinarily dedicated individuals, some of the greatest patriots you’ll meet anywhere, and they really come in every day with one objective in mind, and that’s to carry out the foreign policy goals, objectives of the administration, but to serve the interests of the American people. So what I look forward to every day is even if we’re talking about really complicated issues, like the one I just described – and Syria is one of the most complex situations on the ground – the level of intelligence and the level of openness for us to have a good conversation about that is what I most look forward to. And I have a bullpen area – it used to be the Deputy Secretary of Management’s office. I absconded it, and we have nothing but whiteboards in there, and I love going in the bullpen and just whiteboarding these exercises. What I least look forward to coming in to are those days when I have to deal with the loss of life. And whether it’s the loss of a State Department person, or the loss of military personnel, or any American citizen anywhere, those are the days that are difficult, because you make calls to family members, you try to – people who have been taken hostage, you try to give their families reassurance, but those are the days that are really tough.
