Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Turkey’s president and foreign minister today.
Today, Secretary Tillerson held a bilateral meeting with #Turkey’s President @rt_erdogan and Foreign Minister @mevlutcavusoglu in Ankara to discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues. pic.twitter.com/HCRtipL96N
— Department of State (@StateDept) February 15, 2018
He was the only American present, according to this Bloomberg News reporter.
Secretary of State Tillerson is currently meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is the lone US representative and Turkey’s foreign minister is translating.
— Nicholas Wadhams (@nwadhams) February 15, 2018
He has done this before. It’s diplomatic malpractice not to have one’s own interpreter. The other guy’s interpreter can tell you what you want to hear, and the other guy’s note-taker can write it up so it looks like you agreed with what they want to hear. It’s stupid beyond belief.
And interpreting (which is the correct term for working with speech in real time) is a full-time job. Nobody’s foreign minister should be interpreting. They are participating in the meeting.
Not having his own interpreter and note-taker tells the world that Tillerson can be rolled.
Open thread. What kind of stupidity have you encountered today?
Rex Tillerson Knows All The Languages And Has A Photographic MemoryPost + Comments (95)