Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017.

I'm Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today by the BBC's Paul Wood, who is in New York, and we're going to be talking about the

firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Paul, I think it's fair to say that Secretary of State

Rex Tillotson's firing is not altogether surprising. It seems to have been on the cards for a long

time, but it's the manner in which he's gone that is really quite shocking. Do you agree with that?

Well, as Mr. Trump is supposed to have said to his own daughter, Ivanko, when she was

savished by Steve Bannon, it's a rough town, baby. And Mr. Tillerson was told by tweet, if you

believe, not officials briefing anonymously, in fact, but the official statement from the

Undersecretary of Public Affairs and State Department said this was done by tweet.

The White House is saying, well, Tillerson knew since Friday and it was all going to be a managed exit.

But now AP are now reporting that Kelly rang Tillerson on Friday.

This is unconfirmed, but rang Tillerson on Friday and told him to expect to tweet.

So that's how he was

alerted to the possibility he was about to be fired. Well, it's efficient, isn't it? You don't have to

send a messenger with a letter across town. You don't have to get Mr Tillerson to the Ovaloff. He's

just tweeted out. But it's brutal, isn't it? And extraordinarily, Mr Tillerson has not set the record for the shortest lived Secretary of State.

There are 15 others, but those 15 are basically people who are appointed at the end of presidential terms or during transitions or it was temporary.

This really is a shockingly early exit. And especially Secretary of State is not an office that changes over very rapidly.

And it's a sign of the awful personal relationship that

developed between Tillerson and Trump. And above all, the job of any cabinet minister who works

with Trump is to manage the relationship with the president, particularly this president, who is so

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