Hello listeners. This is Politico's Nurdcast. I'm Charlie Matessian sitting in for Scott Bland. This week we're talking Rexit.

Rex Tillerson's departure from the State Department, which was a long time coming,

and it still managed to take people by surprise.

Plus we'll talk about the oh so close race for a congressional seat in Western Pennsylvania.

Some Republicans are sounding the alarm about the prospect of

losing the House majority after losing that one. A reminder to our

listeners to subscribe to the Nurdcast, rate us, and write a review. And one more note before we begin.

We're taping this a little bit before noon, eastern time on Thursday, March 15th,

so it's all up to date as of then. So okay let's get started by

welcoming Nurdcast regular Emily Stevenson and editor here at

Politico. Hi. Hey Emily and we've got Holly Tousi, a Foreign Affairs correspondent for Politico.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming back.

All right, on to our first data point.

75,000. That's how many people work for the State Department across the world.

Although I guess it's probably 74,900 and in the 90s now that Rex Tillerson and some of his top aides got fired.

Emily, let me start with you.

Walk us through the firing, which I might add came by a tweet.

Well, the White House would take issue with saying that this was a

firing by tweet. They say that Rex Tillerson had some warning that this was

coming. The State Department though on Tuesday said that Tillerson did not know he was going to be fired and didn't

know why. So some discrepancy about whether this was a firing by tweet or not, but

...