MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin and Sepp Blatter just can’t stop praising each other.

The Russian president, speaking with Swiss TV on Monday, said the embattled head of FIFA deserves a Nobel Prize for his work.

Two days after Putin and Blatter hosted the preliminary draw for the 2018 World Cup, Putin said “people like Blatter … deserve special recognition.”

Blatter had opened the draw ceremony Saturday — held at a palace in St. Petersburg that is an official Putin residence — and warmly congratulated his host.

“Thank you, President Putin, you make us happy and comfortable,” said Blatter, who was making his first trip outside his native Switzerland since American and Swiss investigations of corruption in soccer were revealed in May.

Besides Blatter, Putin suggested to Swiss state broadcaster RTS that heads of international sports federations and Olympic committees would also be worthy recipients.

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia and FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter speak during the Preliminary Draw of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia at The Konstantin Palace on July 25, 2015 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

“Let’s have Nobel Prizes for people like that,” said Putin, who approved lavish spending on the 2014 Sochi Olympics that cost $51 billion to prepare and stage.

On Saturday, Blatter told Putin that the Russian people “can be proud” of him and that FIFA says “yes to Russia, we are providing our support.”

Russia’s successful bid to host the World Cup is central to the Swiss federal investigation. That case also focuses on the 2022 bidding campaign, won by Qatar.

The American case has named three former FIFA vice-presidents among 14 soccer and marketing officials indicted in May on widespread racketeering charges. A further four men have made guilty pleas in the widening case that is also expected to target Blatter and the 2018-2022 World Cup bid contests.

Putin said in the Swiss interview, recorded Saturday in St. Petersburg, that he was sure Blatter was not corrupt. He added that, by making allegations against FIFA, the Americans and their allies in Britain were continuing to fight the World Cup bidding contest. Both the United States and Britain bid for the tournaments won by Qatar and Russia.

Blatter made a similar comment in his first interview after being re-elected president of FIFA on May 29.

Four days after the interview aired on RTS, Blatter announced he would step down within months. The new election is scheduled for Feb. 26.

Blatter has long coveted a Nobel Peace Prize for FIFA on behalf of world soccer, but the corruption cases appear finally to have ended that hope.

On June 15, the Nobel Peace Center in Norway terminated its co-operation with FIFA in a project called “Handshake for Peace.” FIFA criticized the Nobel organization the next day for lacking fair play and announcing the split via the media.

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

Vladimir Putin and Sepp Blatter just can’t stop praising each other. The Russian president, speaking with Swiss TV on Monday, said the embattled head of FIFA deserves a Nobel Prize for his work. Two days after Putin and Blatter hosted the preliminary draw for the 2018 World Cup, Putin said “people like Blatter … deserve special recognition.” Blatter had opened the draw ceremony Saturday — held at a palace in St. Petersburg that is an official Putin residence — and warmly congratulated his host.

Didier Drogba is already receiving a warm welcome from soccer fans across Montreal. The Montreal Impact announced on Monday afternoon that the club acquired striker Drogba from the Chicago Fire. The 37-year-old former Chelsea star has racked up a long list of accolades over his career. For Brian O’Sullivan, who works at the Irish Embassy where many gather to watch the Impact games, the trade was shocking. “He’s a Chelsea legend. He’s one of the most consistent goal scorers of the Premier League,” said O’Sullivan. “He’s obviously a huge name.” For others, it brings hope that maybe more Montrealers will tune into Impact games and support their local team.

Long before the first tree is cut, before a path is cleared to make way for the sprawling Energy East pipeline, Canada’s First Nations people will be heard. Hundreds will testify before the National Energy Board, detailing how the construction of a 4,600-kilometre pipeline and the tarsands oil it will carry from Alberta to New Brunswick could damage their traditional hunting grounds, fisheries and water supply. All told, they’ll speak for thousands of hours, putting forward a small mountain of legal documents in hopes of having some mitigating impact on the project. The NEB will consider this evidence before deciding whether it will approve Trans Canada’s $12-billion pipeline. But is that enough? Does that meet the Constitutional obligation the Crown has to consult with and accommodate First Nations whose treaty rights and land claims could be affected by the project? The Kahnwake and Kanesatake Mohawks don’t seem to think so.

And finally, the brewery most identified with Montreal remains committed to the city, but that doesn’t mean it might not change location. François Lefebvre, director of corporate affairs for Molson Coors, says the brewery expects to be in position to decide by the end of the year on the fate of its landmark plant on Notre-Dame Street East, which has roots going back more than two centuries. Renovation is one option. A new plant on the same site is a second, and a new plant somewhere else in the Montreal region is a third. “This is a good news story. We’re looking to invest here in Quebec and Montreal, and improve our brewery,” Lefebvre said. “We just want to know what’s the best way to do it. All the scenarios are on the table.” The company, which employs almost 1,000 people on Notre-Dame Street and 1,500 in the province as a whole, advised staff two weeks ago of its plans.

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

That FIFA godfather Sepp Blatter is in the crosshairs of investigators on both sides of the Atlantic is hardly a surprise.

Blatter, after all, has spent the past 17 years running an organization that is more like an international crime syndicate than a sports federation.

The surprise, the shock that might spell the end for FIFA, is that Michel Platini has also been implicated in the latest scandal and that Platini also is under investigation. The news the UEFA president himself could face a suspension for taking a payment of 2 million Swiss francs in 2011 (nine years after he supposedly concluded the consultant’s work for which he was paid) pretty well puts an end to Platini’s status as the reformer’s candidate to replace Blatter.

Platini might still run and win, but if he does, it will only underline how hopelessly corrupt FIFA has become and how impossible it is to reform the organization from within. As long as all 209 member nations carry an equal vote within FIFA (giving tiny island federations equal power with Germany, the U.S., England, France, Italy and China) any reform attempt is probably doomed anyway. It’s simply too easy to bribe small, hard-up nations for their support.

This system has led, among other things, to the purchase of the 2022 World Cup by the tiny, scorching-hot nation of Qatar, where women are systematically discriminated against, booze is forbidden and the arenas are being built, at a terrible human cost, by slave labour.

What a wonderful spot for a World Cup. It’s the equivalent of allowing Myanmar to host the Hockey World Cup. Hockey might have its problems, but arrogance and corruption on FIFA’s scale would be unimaginable in any other sport.

With Blatter and Platini now under investigation (and Blatter himself still clinging to power despite everything) the only conceivable solution might be for the major soccer nations to get together and form their own organization outside FIFA. If Europe, the U.S. and South America go, FIFA is effectively dead.

The answer now would be to bring in an outsider with an impeccable reputation and the power to impose draconian solutions to completely reform FIFA from within. I would submit the name of Montreal’s own Richard Pound, but I doubt if he wants the job — and I doubt anyone inside FIFA would want a genuine reformer if he did.

But this has to be the end of the line. The people who run FIFA belong behind bars, and their possible successors are as bad as they are — or they would be, given half the chance. The only mercy in all this is the Qatar World Cup might never come off and, with luck, perhaps the Russian kleptocracy run by Vladimir Putin won’t play host in 2018, either.

Then, perhaps, the beautiful game can find a new direction.

Strange & stranger: The worse writer on the worst soap opera on television couldn’t dream up a plot twist more bizarre than what happened in the investigation into potential rape charges against Blackhawks star Patrick Kane last week.

First, an attorney for the alleged victim hauled out, with great drama, a bag that supposedly contained the rape kit with evidence relating to the case, which he claimed was found jammed between the front door and the screen door at the home of the victim’s mother. Then, 24 hours later, the same attorney announced he had been lied to and he no longer represents the victim or her mother.

In the wake of all those twists and turns, I watched the press conference called by Erie County district attorney Frank Sedita in its entirety. He, at least, was reassuring. Despite some unnecessary kidding around, he was thoroughly professional, thoughtful and quite clear about the investigation. The only possible conclusion was that, despite everything, the investigation is in good hands.

While Sedita has not yet made a determination on whether his office will proceed with the case against Kane, he did call out the victim’s mother for perpetrating a hoax and he did indicate pretty strongly the case against Kane now might never proceed to a grand jury.

The damage done to the investigation — or at least to the prosecutor’s case — is undeniable. Whatever the mother’s motives, whether she was desperate, stressed, stupid, venal or just plain crazy, she has handed the defence another weapon with which to batter her daughter in court, if it comes to that.

It’s impossible to imagine what the mother hoped to achieve with this outlandish stunt. Whatever, she could not have done a better job of dismantling the case against Kane if she was getting paid by his defence team. In what has already been one of the weirder cases in the long history of sports figures vs. the law, the latest twist was completely outlandish.

Of course, it was immediately taken by Kane’s supporters as “proof” of the hockey star’s innocence. The alleged victim’s mother is a couple cans short of a six-pack, therefore Kane is white as the driven snow. Uh — not quite. The mother is not the daughter and strange as it is, the evidence bag stunt in and of itself has no direct bearing on the case.

Furthermore, in the U.S. justice system, the fact someone is found not guilty, or a case is not brought to trial, in no way implies the accused is innocent in the real world. If the district attorney decides not to take the case to a grand jury, it doesn’t mean Kane has been “absolved” or “exonerated” any more than it means he’s guilty. It means only the prosecutor does not believe he has enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the accused is guilty.

Unfortunately, the mother’s actions make it more much likely we will never get to the truth about what happened. Kane will claim he’s innocent, the Blackhawks will go on coddling their spoiled child and embarrassing themselves with stunts like playing “I Fought the Law” when he takes the ice — and women all over the world will feel they have no chance of bringing rich, powerful men to justice when the alleged crime is sexual assault.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

twitter.com/jacktodd46

Re: “Putin firing on all cylinders” (Montreal Gazette, Oct. 8)

Shame on you. Your “clever” headline with the photo of Vladimir Putin in a hockey uniform is as irresponsible as it is hurtful to the millions of people whose lives Putin has negatively affected.

History will show, and if we have the ears and eyes to pay attention many of us already know, that Putin is responsible for many thousands of civilian deaths recently in Ukraine and countless civilian deaths in Syria. By using such a cheeky headline and affording Putin such a large picture, you play into his hands and his need for international recognition and his yearning for respect.

Nestor Lewyckyj, Kirkland 

So, despite Stephen Harper’s fear-mongering about the economy, no one and nothing blinked, the stock market is stable, the loonie hasn’t gone crazy.

Economists are sanguine. We are going to have gender parity in the Liberal cabinet, murdered and missing aboriginal women will get the attention they deserve, seniors and scientists will get their due, and here’s hoping the mail will be delivered through sleet and snow.

New voters came out to vote in throngs, some in niqabs, and green will be the new red. I feel hopeful, invigorated. Justin Trudeau will build relationships with his provincial counterparts, the only way to accomplish anything as a country.

I volunteered for the first time in any election as a candidate’s representative. I watched the polls, the votes counted, and it was the most interesting, wonderful experience. Made me so proud. Learned so much. The antidote to taking for granted all we have here.

For me, the leadership of the last 10 years for me has been an aberration. Canada tried a path that did not suit our temperament or values. I’m looking forward to the future instead of reliving the past. Initially, Justin Trudeau was given little expectation of succeeding; now the danger is too much may be expected. I have real hope that Trudeau will stay true to his stated intentions.

When Trudeau meets with Vladimir Putin, I hope he challenges him to a friendly boxing match. I want to see more of his Haida tattoo!

Sandi Brown, Hampstead

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government has yet to respond to an offer by Russia to dispatch massive water bombers and firefighting specialists to battle the growing inferno around Fort McMurray, Alta.

The proposal was made late last week by Vladimir Puchkov, the Russian minister of emergency measures.

A spokesperson for Russia’s embassy in Ottawa, Kirill Kalinin, said Sunday that they continue to stand “ready to help our Canadian partners to fight the ongoing wildfires in Alberta.”

The offer involves sending converted Ilyushin Il-76 transport planes — the kind occasionally leased by the Canadian military — that can dump as much as “42 tons of fire retardant into fire spots,” according to a statement on the web site of Russia’s Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters.

In addition, Moscow said it has “rescuers and specialists with necessary equipment” ready to help on the ground, if need be.

There has been a diplomatic chill between Canada and Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in the spring of 2014, but since the election the Liberal government has said it wanted a constructive relationship with President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Speaking on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the fire, which is expected to cover up to 3,000 square kilometres by the end of the day, continues to grow. But he made no mention of the Russian overture — or any other potential pitch of international assistance.

“It’s big. It’s out of control and the end is not in sight,” Goodale told the news program.

The Department of Global Affairs was asked about the Kremlin’s offer and whether other countries had extended similar proposals, but no one was immediately available to comment.

Canadian officials did tell Russian media that the proposal was being studied.

At least 27 air tankers and 15 helicopters are involved in fighting the wildfire that has driven more than 88,000 people from their homes in the oilpatch community.

Goodale was also not prepared Sunday to call out the army to join the more than 600 firefighters from Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick who have been part of the effort to contain the blaze, the origins of which remain a mystery.

Troops were deployed last year to help contain a massive woodland blaze in Saskatchewan, but Goodale said Sunday it was best to leave the current disaster to full-time firefighters.

“This is a beast of a fire and it needs the most professional fighters to contend with it,” he said.

The air force, meanwhile, deployed one of its new heavy-lift battlefield helicopters Sunday for the first time in support of the disaster relief operation. The CH-147F Chinook took two loads of food, medicine and emergency supplies to a First Nations community 50 kilometres outside of Fort McMurray.

It bolsters the existing four CH-146 Griffons and the one C-130J Hercules, which have been involved since midway through last week.

The Chinook, with its 36,700 kilogram load capacity, is an important addition for moving relief supplies quickly into remote area, said Maj. Gord Gushue, the deputy commander of the air task force supporting the operation.

He said the skies around the wildfire are already pretty congested and military pilots have had to take care.

“You can appreciate that the (civilian pilots) might be running a bucket ops where they scoop up water and move it around, going up and down quite a ways. So, they have to be very careful to make sure no one is flying underneath them — or overhead,” Gushue said in an interview from Edmonton.

The pilots have faced some pretty severe smoke conditions that in one case saw a Griffon helicopter take off from Fort McMurray and fly out using instruments because the conditions were so bad.

COPENHAGEN — A street artist in Lithuania has adorned a barbecue restaurant with a poster showing Donald Trump locking lips with Vladimir Putin.

Restaurant owner Dominykas Ceckauskas said Saturday the presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee and the Russian president both have huge egos “and they seem to get along pretty well.”

He said the image is “an ironic view of what can be expected.”

Local artist Mindaugas Bonanu created the wheat paste poster for the eatery in the capital Vilnius on Friday. It’s on the outside of the Keule Ruke restaurant — Lithuanian for “Smoking Pig” — along with the text “Make Everything Great Again” — a play on Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Ceckauskas said the poster was a nod to a 1979 photograph of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German ally Erich Honecker on the mouth — once a customary greeting between Socialist leaders. The iconic shot was later painted on the Berlin Wall.

There have been no calls to remove the more than 2-meter poster.

Berlin once was the symbol of the Cold War, Ceckauskas noted.

“We think that the border now is not in Berlin, but somewhere here in the Baltic states, between (the) East and the West,” he told The Associated Press.

Lithuania — and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia — regained its independence in the early 1990’s after nearly five decades under Soviet occupation and the 1991 Soviet collapse. More than a dozen people were killed and scores were injured in a Soviet crackdown on Lithuania’s independence drive in January 1991.

All three Baltic nations have since joined NATO.

I must admit I blanched a bit when I received a personal invitation from one Bernie Ecclestone last week.

What, I wondered, does the Formula One supremo really want? Blood on the track? My head on a platter? Am I to undergo beheading in the paddock or be torn apart, lashed to F1 machines heading in opposite directions at maximum torque?

I clicked on the message with trepidation, only to discover that it was a routine invitation to a press conference, something about a new major sponsor. Yawn.

I had nothing to fear. If Ecclestone was to put out a contract on every journo who ever said something bad about him, it would considerably deplete his personal fortune, estimated by Forbes at $3.8 billion US in 2015.

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• Bernie Ecclestone warns of trouble ahead for Canadian Grand Prix
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• More on the Canadian Grand Prix

Like everyone else who writes about this sport on occasion, I’ve been mildly critical of Ecclestone at times – especially of his attempts to bludgeon this province into accepting tobacco advertising on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in defiance of our own tobacco laws.

The cumulative effect of all I’ve written about the man has been, like everything else said about him, precisely nil. Every motor sport journalist in the U.K., it would seem, has taken a run at Ecclestone, to no effect whatsoever. Ecclestone is still on his perch, still as powerful as ever, with no sign that he’s about to give up his death grip on the reins of F1 any time soon. Ecclestone has basically been in command of the circuit since he helped form the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974 – and over that time, despite occasional opposition from all sides, he has done little but consolidate his power.

Nor has he trimmed his jib or learned to avoid controversy, even though he will turn 86 in October. During a discussion with British advertising executive Sir Martin Sorrell in front of 300 advertising executives in April, Ecclestone said, among other things, that Vladimir Putin “should be running Europe.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone in the paddock during the inaugural Russian Formula 1 Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom in Sochi on October 12, 2014.

When Sorrell asked if Ecclestone meant that Putin should be in charge at European Union headquarters in Brussels, Ecclestone said, “No, we should get rid of Brussels and he should just be in charge. He does what he says he’s gonna do, he gets the job done. I mean people don’t understand exactly what he wants to do. … He wants to put Russia back to what it was.”

(Ecclestone did not explain whether Putin wants to make Russia a serf-owning society run by an autocratic czar or a Stalinesque tyranny in which millions were murdered in the gulags. Does it matter? Ecclestone has never met a tyrant he didn’t like – which is part of the reason F1 has expanded to China, Russia, Bahrain and beyond.)

Ecclestone added that Putin “gets the job done,” echoing comments he had previously made about Adolf Hitler. Not surprisingly, he also expressed his admiration for Donald Trump: “I think he’d be fantastic [as president],” he said. “I’m sure he’s much more flexible than most of them. If he’s made a mistake, he’s more likely to say: ‘It was a good idea at the time.'”

Ecclestone has much in common with Trump – and both men have a habit of saying so many outrageous things that none of it seems to stick.

Ecclestone, who once tried and failed to make it as an F1 driver himself, also ventured into the sticky topic of women in F1. “I don’t know whether a woman would physically be able to drive an F1 car quickly, and they wouldn’t be taken seriously,” he said. (At least, on this occasion, he did not compare women to kitchen appliances.)

The F1 boss also said that he wants the U.K. out of Europe, lending his weight to the “leave” campaign in the referendum, pending this month, which will decide whether Britain parts company with the EU to go its own way.

Ecclestone has much in common with Trump – and both men have a habit of saying so many outrageous things that none of it seems to stick. I have observed the man since I began writing a sports column in 1994, so nothing he says or does really surprises me.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone walks through the paddock with his wife Fabiana Flosi during previews ahead of the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix at Marina Bay Street Circuit on September 18, 2014 in Singapore.

My most vivid impression of Ecclestone was gathered during race week in Jerez, Spain, in 1997, when our Jacques Villeneuve outgunned Michael Schumacher to win the drivers’ championship. Ecclestone owned that track, if memory serves. It was normally a site for motorcycle racing that had been pressed into service for the final race of the season because of problems at the scheduled facility in Estoril, Portugal.

At Jerez, Ecclestone swept through the paddock, deep in conversation with the great Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, trailed at a respectable distance by Ecclestone’s stunning six-foot wife. (That wife would be Slavica, from whom, according to the Daily Mail, Ecclestone was, for some impossibly complicated reason, receiving payments of 60 million pounds per year after their 2009 divorce.)

The impression of Ecclestone in Jerez was indelible: skin problems, bad hair, oversized glasses, about as tall as a jockey’s shoulder, with the manner of Napoleon at Austerlitz. Ecclestone never needed to be big to command; it was all in his strut.

There is no sign that Ecclestone, at 85, is slowing down in his private or public life. In 2012, he married Fabiana Flosi, who was the marketing VP for the Brazilian Grand Prix at the time and 46 years his junior.

Bernie Ecclestone (C), the 83-year-old controlling business magnate in Formula One racing, arrives for the first day of his trial for bribery on April 24, 2014 in Munich, Germany. Ecclestone is accused of bribing BayernLB bank employee Gerhard Gribkowsky to ensure the sale of SLEC Holdings, the parent company of Formula One, to private equity firm CVC.

Ecclestone might be the most unlovely of men, but he is a survivor. He was faced with perhaps the most serious threat to his power in the form of a trial in connection with a $44 million bribe paid to German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky. Gribkowsky confessed to charges of tax evasion, breach of trust and accepting a bribe and in early 2014, a Munich court ruled that Ecclestone himself would face bribery charges, but in August of that year, the same court ruled that Ecclestone could pay a 60-million pound settlement to end the trial without admitting his guilt.

That’s Ecclestone. 

Knowing what we know about him, would you bet on Ecclestone, trailed by another and still younger wife, striding through his empire when the Grand Prix comes to visit Île Notre Dame in 2026?

Perhaps not. But I wouldn’t bet against him, either.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

Twitter.com/jacktodd46

WASHINGTON — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani emerged as the favourite to serve as secretary of state in Donald Trump’s incoming administration, a senior Trump official said as the president-elect narrowed down his Cabinet picks.

The official said there was no real competition for the job and that it was Giuliani’s if he wanted it. The official was not authorized to speak on the record and requested anonymity.

Giuliani, a top Trump adviser, said Monday night at a Washington event sponsored by the Wall Street Journal that he “won’t be attorney general” in Trump’s administration — a job for which the former federal prosecutor had been seen as a top contender even before Trump’s election.

Giuliani said he thought John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “would be a very good choice” for secretary of state. But asked if there was anyone better, he replied with a mischievous smile: “Maybe me, I don’t know.”

Trump was also considering Monday whether to inject new diversity into the GOP by recommending a woman to lead the Republican Party and an openly gay man to represent the United States at the United Nations.

The moves, among dozens under consideration from his transition team, follow an intense and extended backlash from Trump’s decision on Sunday to appoint Steve Bannon, a man celebrated by the white nationalist movement, to serve as his chief strategist and senior adviser.

“After winning the presidency but losing the popular vote, President-elect Trump must try to bring Americans together — not continue to fan the flames of division and bigotry,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. She called Bannon’s appointment “an alarming signal” that Trump “remains committed to the hateful and divisive vision that defined his campaign.”

His inauguration just 66 days away, however, Trump focused on building his team and speaking to foreign leaders. He remained sequestered in Trump Tower in New York.

Inexperienced on the international stage, the Republican president-elect spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone. His transition office said in a readout that “he is very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia.” Trump has spoken in recent days with the leaders of China, Mexico, South Korea and Canada.

At the same time, Trump was considering tapping Richard Grenell as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He would be the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post. Grenell, known in part for aggressive criticism of rivals on Twitter, previously served as U.S. spokesman at the U.N. under President George W. Bush.

Trump was also weighing whether to select Michigan GOP chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, a niece of chief Trump critic and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. She would be the second woman ever to lead the Republican National Committee — and the first in four decades.

“I’ll be interested in whatever Mr. Trump wants,” McDaniel told The Associated Press on Monday, adding that she was planning to seek the Michigan GOP chairmanship again.

Appointing McDaniel to run the GOP’s political arm could be an effort to help the party heal the anger after a campaign in which Trump demeaned women. The appointment of Grenell, who has openly supported same-sex marriage, could begin to ease concerns by the gay community about Vice-President-elect Mike Pence’s opposition to same-sex marriage during his time as Indiana governor.

The personnel moves under consideration were confirmed by people with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking who were not authorized to publicly disclose private discussions. They stressed that the decisions were not final.

Internal deliberations about staffing come a day after Trump made overtures to warring Republican circles by appointing Bannon and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff.

The former media executive led a website that appealed to the so-called “alt-right” — a movement often associated with efforts on the far right to preserve “white identity,” oppose multiculturalism and defend “Western values.”

Priebus on Monday defended the media mogul, saying the two made an effective pair as they steered Trump past Democrat Hillary Clinton and toward the presidency. He sought to distance Bannon from the incendiary headlines on his website, saying they were written by unspecified others.

“Together, we’ve been able to manage a lot of the decision making in regard to the campaign,” Priebus told NBC’s “Today.” ”It’s worked very, very well.“

President Barack Obama avoided any direct criticism of Trump’s personnel moves during an afternoon news conference, suggesting that the new president deserves “room to staff up.”

“It’s important for us to let him make his decisions,” Obama said. “The American people will judge over the course of the next couple of years whether they like what they see.”

The outgoing president encouraged Trump, however, to embrace a unifying tone.

“It’s really important to try to send some signals of unity and to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign,” Obama said. “And I think that’s something he will — he will want to do.”

WASHINGTON — Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is Donald Trump’s choice as secretary of state, NBC reported on Saturday, a move that would hand top diplomatic powers to a man whose ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin go back almost two decades.

The report couldn’t be immediately confirmed. NBC said its sources, people close to the president-elect’s transition, cautioned nothing is final until the president-elect makes an announcement. Trump has said he’ll announce his decision next week.

Tillerson, who reaches Exxon’s mandatory retirement age of 65 in March, has become the leading candidate for the post of top U.S. diplomat over the past few days, two people familiar with the matter said late Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Tillerson would be the first oil executive and only the second Texan to lead the State Department.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president and a critic of Trump during this year’s campaign, remains on the short list of candidates, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

Tillerson has ties to Putin that go back almost two decades. The pair met in 1999 on remote Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East. He was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship and as recently as 2015 visited with officials in Putin’s inner circle. That connection could make him a useful bridge between the Russian leader and Trump, who has repeatedly said he’d seek a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.

Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, said Friday on Fox News that the list currently includes “a very diverse group.” In addition to Tillerson and Romney, she mentioned Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford Motor Co., former CIA Director David Petraeus, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tillerson was the leading candidate. NBC reported Saturday Bolton may be tapped as Tillerson’s deputy.

Tillerson would probably face stiff opposition from Democratic and some Republican senators for both his foreign business ventures and an escalating legal tussle over how much Exxon knew about climate change and when. The world’s largest oil explorer by market value has said a probe by state attorneys general in New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere of whether it misled investors about climate risks is politically motivated. Exxon has also been questioned on whether it’s correctly written down the value of its reserves following a global collapse in crude prices.

With the selection, Trump would sidestep a feud that had broken out among his advisers and supporters over the two men seen as the front-runners for the spot: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Romney. Giuliani, who had fervently supported Trump for president, campaigned openly for the job. By contrast, Romney sought to mobilize opposition to Trump during the presidential campaign, calling him “a con man, a fake.”

But Tillerson’s selection will also fuel critics who say U.S. foreign policy has long been driven by the country’s demand for oil and that naming an oil executive is the last straw. During the campaign, Trump said the U.S. should have seized Iraq’s oil fields after the U.S. invasion in 2003, a move which he says would have prevented the rise and spread of the Islamic State terror group.

“I’ve always said — shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” Trump said in September. “It used to be, to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”

Exxon pumps oil and natural gas from about 36,000 wells worldwide and holds drilling rights to more than 110 million acres in more than two dozen countries. Tillerson’s resume included stints representing the world’s largest oil explorer by market value in places as far afield as Yemen and Russia.

An Exxon lifer and University of Texas-trained engineer, Tillerson would be the first native-born Texan to lead the State Department since James A. Baker’s tenure ended in 1992.

He’d also add to a Cabinet increasingly full of millionaires and billionaires, including Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross, whose fortune is estimated at about $2.9 billion. Tillerson was paid $27.3 million in salary, bonus, stock awards and other compensation in 2015; his 2.6 million shares of Exxon common stock had a value of about $228 million as of early December.

After becoming CEO in 2006, Tillerson led Exxon through more than a decade of ups and downs that included the late Hugo Chavez’ seizure of Venezuelan oil fields, annual profits that set U.S. corporate records, and a 2010 shale acquisition that turned into a $35-billion wrong-way bet on natural gas.

Outside work, Tillerson used his cachet as a past president of the Boy Scouts of America to help end a long-standing ban on gay scouts in 2013. He also trains rodeo horses on his ranch north of Fort Worth, Texas, and is a former competitive rider himself.

U.S. intelligence officials have informed President-elect Donald Trump about unsubstantiated reports they’ve received that the Russian government had compiled potentially damaging personal and financial information on him, a person familiar with the situation said.

CNN reported earlier on Tuesday that as part of a briefing on Russian attempts to meddle in the presidential election, U.S. spy chiefs included a two-page summary of memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative about alleged Kremlin operations to gather intelligence on Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The FBI hasn’t been able to verify the information in the documents, CNN said.

BuzzFeed later published the entire 35-page compilation of memos, which contain potentially damaging but uncorroborated information about Trump and his associates. The person confirmed that the document was the same as the material in the government’s possession.

The aim of the alleged Russian government intelligence-gathering was to leverage the information to shift U.S. policy toward Russia, including by potentially blackmailing Trump, according to the memos. President Barack Obama also was briefed on the documents.

Trump Denunciation

Trump denounced “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” on Twitter at about 8:20 p.m. in New York, without mentioning or linking to any of the reports. 

One of the memos alleged that Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen met with “Kremlin officials” there in August 2016. Cohen tweeted that “I have never been to Prague in my life” with a picture of the front of his passport.

Spokespeople for Trump’s transition operation did not respond to requests for comment. FBI spokesman Andrew Ames declined to comment.

CNN reported that senior intelligence officials gave Trump a summary of the allegations to make him aware that the information had been circulating among some lawmakers, government officials and journalists.

The reports emerged the night before Trump was scheduled to hold his first news conference since winning the election. The Senate is also scheduled to begin a confirmation hearing Wednesday for Trump’s nominee as secretary of state, former Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, whom Democrats have criticized for having close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian Hacks

Before last week’s briefing by intelligence officials, Trump had expressed skepticism that Russia was responsible for hacks of Democratic Party officials’ e-mail accounts during the campaign. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Putin ordered the hacking as part of a scheme to tilt the election toward Trump.

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and suggested he wants better relations with the government in Moscow. He’s indicated he would review continuing sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support of anti-government factions in Ukraine.

As recently as Monday, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with USA Today that the president-elect may consider rolling back some of the penalties President Barack Obama imposed on Russia for interfering in the U.S. election.

One of the memos published by BuzzFeed asserts that Russian intelligence agencies had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Trump for at least five years, and that Russian operatives believed they had enough compromising information to blackmail him “if they so chose.”

It was an epic fail. A botched call so egregious it calls the National Hockey League’s entire replay review process into question and the worst blown call you will see — until the next one.

It was the latest argument for sending the Toronto War Room the way of the dodo and bringing some kind of sanity to the way calls are made in the NHL, because this isn’t working.

By now, you’ve seen the replay 1,243 times and you’re as baffled as I am. At the 6:20 mark of the second period Saturday night, with the Rangers and Canadiens tied at 1-1, New York centreman Kevin Hayes blows in on Carey Price, tries a deke and is stopped on a pretty good save.

Hayes’s momentum carries him into Price’s pad and in a play I’ve never seen in 50 years watching hockey, he drags the goaltender four or five feet away from the net. With Price conveniently out of the net, Rick Nash whacks the puck into the net and the Rangers take a 2-1 lead.

Except the goal should have been waved off. It was goaltender interference, pure and simple. No room for argument. Sportsnet’s Garry Galley (who seems to have been inserted into Habs broadcasts solely for his ability to infuriate the Montreal fan base) babbled on and on about how Hayes didn’t intend to snag Price’s pad, but that argument was irrelevant.

Like a stick that accidentally gets caught in an opponent’s skate and trips him, intent has nothing to do with it: It’s the result that matters and the result was Price was taken out of the play and was unable to make the save.

No worries, right? This is why we have replay review. But replay review got it spectacularly wrong and the goal was allowed. The league’s explanation the — “incidental contact outside the crease between Hayes and Price did not constitute a goaltender interference infraction” — was a bit of bafflegab nonsense worthy of the Trump transition team.

Thanks to Eric Engels of Sportsnet, who posted the relevant section of the rule book, since the NHL appears incapable of reading its own rules: “Goals should be disallowed only if 1) an attacking player, either by his positioning or by contact, impairs the goaltender’s ability freely within his crease or to defend his goal.”

Price’s pad might have been outside the crease when Hayes made contact, but the rest of his body was in the crease and in position to make another save had Hayes not dragged him out of the way. There’s more, but that’s all you need. It’s clear-cut, open-and-shut, black-and-white. And yet a replay system that disallowed a first-period Canadiens goal after Andrew Shaw was knocked into the goaltender somehow found a way to allow Nash’s goal to stand.

Not for the first time, a call that clearly came from Toronto went against the Canadiens for no discernible reason except bias on the part of those making the decisions. This is a powder keg waiting to blow. One of these days, an improving Leafs team is going to clash with the Canadiens in the playoffs. With the NHL’s profoundly biased replay structure, a critical call is going to go against Montreal and we’re going to have Richard Riot: The Motion Picture.

Look, I despise video replay reviews on principle. They’re an unnecessary and pointless delay, an invention of the fun police designed to drain every game of its entertainment value.

In baseball, they represent an unwelcome technological intrusion into an old-fashioned game. In football, replay reviews negate the most spectacular catches. Unless the receiver can whip out a smart phone and take a selfie of himself landing with the ball, it’s no catch. And in hockey — well, in hockey they simply can’t get it right, no matter how much time they waste.

When I succeed Vladimir Putin as Czar of the Free World and Donald Trump’s boss, replay reviews will be banned with one exception: Did the ball or puck cross the goal line? Yes or no, the way soccer does it with ball technology. The rest of this sorry apparatus, get rid of it. Have a giant tech giveaway and hand all that pricey equipment to schools, because it isn’t doing the leagues that employ it a bit of good.

In the NHL, the replay system is doing active harm. You can understand when a referee gets a call wrong, especially in a sport as swift and violent as hockey. But when a review crew takes its time, examines the play in high-definition, slow-motion detail and blows it completely — it’s time to get rid of the whole thing and let the refs do their job.

The refs can’t possibly be any worse — and they take far less time to make a call.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

twitter.com/jacktodd46

WASHINGTON — Questions about the Trump administration’s ties to Russia are hardly going to disappear with the firing of national security adviser Michael Flynn. Investigations are underway, and more are likely by the new administration and on Capitol Hill.

U.S. agencies, including the FBI, have been probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And three congressional committees are conducting their own investigations that include looking at contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign and administration.

This isn’t the first time Trump has distanced himself from an adviser in light of a relationships with Moscow. In late August, Paul Manafort resigned as Trump’s campaign chairman after disclosures by The Associated Press about his firm’s covert lobbying on behalf of the former pro-Russian ruling political party in Ukraine.

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that members of Trump’s campaign, including Manafort, had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the year before the election. The U.S. knew about these contacts through phone records and intercepted calls, the Times said.

Reached late Tuesday, Manafort told The Associated Press he has not been interviewed by the FBI about these alleged contacts.

“I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today,” Manafort said.

Officials who spoke with the Times anonymously said they had not yet seen any evidence of the Trump campaign co-operating with the Russians on hacking or other attempts to influence the election.

Trump’s own ties to Russia have been questioned in light of his friendly posture toward the long-time U.S. adversary and reluctance to criticize President Vladimir Putin, even for Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014.

“This isn’t simply about a change in policy toward Russia, as the administration would like to portray. It’s what’s behind that change in policy,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, one of the congressional bodies investigating. Schiff said there are continuing questions about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and whether anyone assisted Moscow in hacking.

“It’s not just that an administration official was caught lying. It’s that the national security adviser to the president was caught lying and on a matter of central importance. So this is big,” Schiff said.

The Obama administration said Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of electing Trump. Trump has acknowledged that Russia hacked Democratic emails but denies it was to help him win.

The investigations and the unusual firing of the national security adviser just 24 days into his job have put Republicans in the awkward position of investigating the leader of their party. Senior GOP lawmakers continue to deny Democrats’ requests that an independent panel be established to carry out the Russia investigation. So the congressional probes are ultimately in the hands of the Republican chairmen, and the executive branch’s investigation has been overseen ultimately by Trump appointees.

On Tuesday, Republican leaders focused on the idea that Flynn misled Vice-President Mike Pence about the nature of his contacts with the Russian ambassador — not on any questioning of the relationship between Flynn and the ambassador. Democrats say a key issue is whether Flynn broke diplomatic protocol and potentially the law by discussing U.S. sanctions with Moscow before Trump’s inauguration.

The Justice Department had warned the White House late last month that Flynn could be at risk for blackmail because of contradictions between his public depictions of the calls with the Russian ambassador and what intelligence officials knew about the conversations.

“You cannot have a national security adviser misleading the vice-president and others,” said Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Daniel Jones, a former lead investigator on the Senate intelligence committee, said it’s important that Congress investigate Flynn’s ties to Russia and make sure that doesn’t get lost in a broader probe into Russia and the 2016 election.

“This is a checks-and-balances issue,” Jones said. “This shouldn’t be a political issue.”

On the other hand, California Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he was concerned Flynn’s rights were violated in the interception of his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

“I’m just shocked that nobody’s covering the real crime here,” Nunes said. “You have an American citizen who had his phone call recorded and then leaked to the media.”

Nunes said he intended to ask the FBI “what the hell’s going on here.”

The FBI has wide legal authority to eavesdrop on the conversations of foreign intelligence targets, including diplomats, inside the U.S.

Flynn did not concede any wrongdoing in his resignation letter, saying merely that he “inadvertently briefed the vice-president elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador.”

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate intelligence committee which is already investigating Russia and the 2016 election, said Flynn’s resignation raises more questions.

For example, he said, there are open questions about how many conversations Flynn actually had with the Russians and whether other people knew he was having them.

While North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said much of the panel’s investigation will occur behind closed doors, Wyden said he planned to push to make the findings and hearings public.

Republican Lindsey Graham, who is leading a Senate judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, echoed Wyden’s concerns about whether Flynn was acting alone and without direction in his contacts. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump did not direct Flynn to discuss U.S. sanctions with the Russians. “No, absolutely not,” Spicer said.

“I think most Americans have a right to know whether or not this was a General Flynn rogue manoeuvr, or was he basically speaking for somebody else in the White House,” Graham told CNN Tuesday.

———

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Erica Werner, Richard Lardner, Chad Day and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government has yet to respond to an offer by Russia to dispatch massive water bombers and firefighting specialists to battle the growing inferno around Fort McMurray, Alta.

The proposal was made late last week by Vladimir Puchkov, the Russian minister of emergency measures.

A spokesperson for Russia’s embassy in Ottawa, Kirill Kalinin, said Sunday that they continue to stand “ready to help our Canadian partners to fight the ongoing wildfires in Alberta.”

The offer involves sending converted Ilyushin Il-76 transport planes — the kind occasionally leased by the Canadian military — that can dump as much as “42 tons of fire retardant into fire spots,” according to a statement on the web site of Russia’s Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters.

In addition, Moscow said it has “rescuers and specialists with necessary equipment” ready to help on the ground, if need be.

There has been a diplomatic chill between Canada and Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in the spring of 2014, but since the election the Liberal government has said it wanted a constructive relationship with President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Speaking on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the fire, which is expected to cover up to 3,000 square kilometres by the end of the day, continues to grow. But he made no mention of the Russian overture — or any other potential pitch of international assistance.

“It’s big. It’s out of control and the end is not in sight,” Goodale told the news program.

The Department of Global Affairs was asked about the Kremlin’s offer and whether other countries had extended similar proposals, but no one was immediately available to comment.

Canadian officials did tell Russian media that the proposal was being studied.

At least 27 air tankers and 15 helicopters are involved in fighting the wildfire that has driven more than 88,000 people from their homes in the oilpatch community.

Goodale was also not prepared Sunday to call out the army to join the more than 600 firefighters from Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick who have been part of the effort to contain the blaze, the origins of which remain a mystery.

Troops were deployed last year to help contain a massive woodland blaze in Saskatchewan, but Goodale said Sunday it was best to leave the current disaster to full-time firefighters.

“This is a beast of a fire and it needs the most professional fighters to contend with it,” he said.

The air force, meanwhile, deployed one of its new heavy-lift battlefield helicopters Sunday for the first time in support of the disaster relief operation. The CH-147F Chinook took two loads of food, medicine and emergency supplies to a First Nations community 50 kilometres outside of Fort McMurray.

It bolsters the existing four CH-146 Griffons and the one C-130J Hercules, which have been involved since midway through last week.

The Chinook, with its 36,700 kilogram load capacity, is an important addition for moving relief supplies quickly into remote area, said Maj. Gord Gushue, the deputy commander of the air task force supporting the operation.

He said the skies around the wildfire are already pretty congested and military pilots have had to take care.

“You can appreciate that the (civilian pilots) might be running a bucket ops where they scoop up water and move it around, going up and down quite a ways. So, they have to be very careful to make sure no one is flying underneath them — or overhead,” Gushue said in an interview from Edmonton.

The pilots have faced some pretty severe smoke conditions that in one case saw a Griffon helicopter take off from Fort McMurray and fly out using instruments because the conditions were so bad.

COPENHAGEN — A street artist in Lithuania has adorned a barbecue restaurant with a poster showing Donald Trump locking lips with Vladimir Putin.

Restaurant owner Dominykas Ceckauskas said Saturday the presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee and the Russian president both have huge egos “and they seem to get along pretty well.”

He said the image is “an ironic view of what can be expected.”

Local artist Mindaugas Bonanu created the wheat paste poster for the eatery in the capital Vilnius on Friday. It’s on the outside of the Keule Ruke restaurant — Lithuanian for “Smoking Pig” — along with the text “Make Everything Great Again” — a play on Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Ceckauskas said the poster was a nod to a 1979 photograph of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German ally Erich Honecker on the mouth — once a customary greeting between Socialist leaders. The iconic shot was later painted on the Berlin Wall.

There have been no calls to remove the more than 2-meter poster.

Berlin once was the symbol of the Cold War, Ceckauskas noted.

“We think that the border now is not in Berlin, but somewhere here in the Baltic states, between (the) East and the West,” he told The Associated Press.

Lithuania — and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia — regained its independence in the early 1990’s after nearly five decades under Soviet occupation and the 1991 Soviet collapse. More than a dozen people were killed and scores were injured in a Soviet crackdown on Lithuania’s independence drive in January 1991.

All three Baltic nations have since joined NATO.

WASHINGTON — Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is Donald Trump’s choice as secretary of state, NBC reported on Saturday, a move that would hand top diplomatic powers to a man whose ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin go back almost two decades.

The report couldn’t be immediately confirmed. NBC said its sources, people close to the president-elect’s transition, cautioned nothing is final until the president-elect makes an announcement. Trump has said he’ll announce his decision next week.

Tillerson, who reaches Exxon’s mandatory retirement age of 65 in March, has become the leading candidate for the post of top U.S. diplomat over the past few days, two people familiar with the matter said late Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Tillerson would be the first oil executive and only the second Texan to lead the State Department.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president and a critic of Trump during this year’s campaign, remains on the short list of candidates, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

Tillerson has ties to Putin that go back almost two decades. The pair met in 1999 on remote Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East. He was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship and as recently as 2015 visited with officials in Putin’s inner circle. That connection could make him a useful bridge between the Russian leader and Trump, who has repeatedly said he’d seek a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.

Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, said Friday on Fox News that the list currently includes “a very diverse group.” In addition to Tillerson and Romney, she mentioned Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford Motor Co., former CIA Director David Petraeus, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tillerson was the leading candidate. NBC reported Saturday Bolton may be tapped as Tillerson’s deputy.

Tillerson would probably face stiff opposition from Democratic and some Republican senators for both his foreign business ventures and an escalating legal tussle over how much Exxon knew about climate change and when. The world’s largest oil explorer by market value has said a probe by state attorneys general in New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere of whether it misled investors about climate risks is politically motivated. Exxon has also been questioned on whether it’s correctly written down the value of its reserves following a global collapse in crude prices.

With the selection, Trump would sidestep a feud that had broken out among his advisers and supporters over the two men seen as the front-runners for the spot: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Romney. Giuliani, who had fervently supported Trump for president, campaigned openly for the job. By contrast, Romney sought to mobilize opposition to Trump during the presidential campaign, calling him “a con man, a fake.”

But Tillerson’s selection will also fuel critics who say U.S. foreign policy has long been driven by the country’s demand for oil and that naming an oil executive is the last straw. During the campaign, Trump said the U.S. should have seized Iraq’s oil fields after the U.S. invasion in 2003, a move which he says would have prevented the rise and spread of the Islamic State terror group.

“I’ve always said — shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” Trump said in September. “It used to be, to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”

Exxon pumps oil and natural gas from about 36,000 wells worldwide and holds drilling rights to more than 110 million acres in more than two dozen countries. Tillerson’s resume included stints representing the world’s largest oil explorer by market value in places as far afield as Yemen and Russia.

An Exxon lifer and University of Texas-trained engineer, Tillerson would be the first native-born Texan to lead the State Department since James A. Baker’s tenure ended in 1992.

He’d also add to a Cabinet increasingly full of millionaires and billionaires, including Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross, whose fortune is estimated at about $2.9 billion. Tillerson was paid $27.3 million in salary, bonus, stock awards and other compensation in 2015; his 2.6 million shares of Exxon common stock had a value of about $228 million as of early December.

After becoming CEO in 2006, Tillerson led Exxon through more than a decade of ups and downs that included the late Hugo Chavez’ seizure of Venezuelan oil fields, annual profits that set U.S. corporate records, and a 2010 shale acquisition that turned into a $35-billion wrong-way bet on natural gas.

Outside work, Tillerson used his cachet as a past president of the Boy Scouts of America to help end a long-standing ban on gay scouts in 2013. He also trains rodeo horses on his ranch north of Fort Worth, Texas, and is a former competitive rider himself.