Investing.com - Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reportedly turned down President-elect Donald Trump's offer to be named Secretary of Homeland Security, holding out, in an apparently unsuccessful negotiating tactic, for an appointment as Secretary of State.
Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) executive Rex Wayne Tillerson, the oil giant's chairman, president, and CEO, is now said to be the front-runner for the Secretary of State position.
President-elect Trump has apparently said that Tillerson's "stock is rising" now that the two have conferred, aides in New York City are letting it be known.
The former New York City mayor's reliability has been questioned by Trump insiders who, along with the president-elect, were disconcerted that Giuliani touted himself publicly as the "best candidate" for Secretary of State.
Tillerson has experience running a large organization with operations in 50 countries, and has been in talks with oil ministers at Iran, giving him international experience.
As a consequence of Giuliani's public lobbying, including remarks at an event sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, the Republican politician, and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York City, who prosecuted mafiosi and Wall Street white collar criminals in the 1980s, has not been invited for a meeting at Trump Tower for about two weeks.
Speaking this evening in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump, continuing his "thank you tour" of the Midwest, said that in "filling my cabinet I am looking for people who are committed to fulfilling the common good."
This appears to be a rebuke, directly, to Giuliani, given the current context.
"We are building one of the great cabinets in U.S. history," Trump claimed, as part of an agenda that "begins with bold structural reforms to create millions of jobs in agriculture, or medicine, or industry. We've got to prime the pump. We've got 96 million people out there (discouraged, long-term unemployed). They're going to have options. They'll be able to pick their jobs, not take whatever they can. We've got people who haven't worked for years. They will be incentivized. We will follow two simple rules. Buy American and hire American."
Trump said he believed the current U.S. unemployment rate of about 5% was "a fiction," as he noted that if one is unemployed for six months, and cannot find a job, one is dropped, statistically, from the rolls of the unemployed, by the government.