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US President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (AFP photo)

Washington(ANN)-US President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after a series of public rifts over issues including Russia and North Korea, replacing his top diplomat with CIA Director and former congressman Mike Pompeo.

Trump tweeted the news of Tillerson’s ouster on Tuesday. Before the president’s tweet, The Washington Post first reported news of Tillerson’s firing, citing White House officials.

Trump praised Tillerson, Pompeo and Gina Haspel, the deputy director at the CIA. if confirmed, Haspel will succeed Pompeo, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency.

“I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump said on Twitter.

Tillerson’s departure has been widely anticipated for months. Tillerson’s exit makes his time in office the shortest of any secretary of state in nearly 120 years.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly developed a plan to oust Tillerson and discussed it with other officials, The New York Times reported in November.

Tensions between Tillerson and Trump have been simmering for months, sometimes visibly. The two have publicly diverged on some of the administration’s most crucial foreign policy challenges, including Iran, Russia and North Korea.

NBC reported in October that Tillerson referred to Trump as a “moron” after a meeting in July at the Pentagon with members of his national security team and Cabinet members.

A few days after the report, Trump harshly criticized Tillerson in an interview with Forbes magazine, suggesting that he’s smarter than the top US diplomat.

Source: Presstv.com