Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about the biggest political event of this year, the 2016 US presidential election.

My name is Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of the Spectator.

Today I'm joined down the line in Washington by Jacob Heilbrun, who is editor of the national interest.

And we're going to be talking about the choice of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State for Donald J. Trump.

And what it means about Donald Trump's foreign policy in the next four years.

So Jacob, Rex Tillerson has been picked by Donald Trump as his choice

for Secretary of State. What does this tell us about Trump's idea of foreign policy? And could you

possibly give us a bit of inside info on how it came about? Well, it's clear that Trump would like to improve relations with Russia.

Yeah.

And none of the other candidates that he was looking at from David Petraeus to Mitt Romney

had the kind of experience with Vladimir Putin that Tillerson does, not to mention they didn't even remotely have the chance to get

the order of friendship from Russia, which Tillerson does.

So Trump was not sold on any of the candidates that he'd had.

And then Robert Gates, who was head of the CIA and former defense secretary, visited

Trump and floated Tillerson's name by him, as did Condoleezza Rice.

He was also national security advisor and secretary of State during the George W. Bush administration.

So Trump met with Tillerson and was apparently wowed.

Tillerson is the kind of man that Trump envisions himself being.

Yeah.

Well, Texan, tough guy, that sort of thing, swagger. And the ability to sit down

mano-o-mano with autocratic world leaders and cut deals. So Tillerson's nomination has engendered,

to use a polite word, considerable consternation among the ranks of Republican hawks, such as

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