Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich touted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over his predecessors, who Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov could "bully."
On Fox News Wednesday, Gringrich said, "I suspect in Tillerson, [Lavrov] has found a guy he can't bully and shove around. And Tillerson will very calmly and methodically stick to the American position, which is Russia clearly has to have known that the Syrians had chemical weapons, they had to have known that they were lying, and they had to know that they were using them."
The former presidential hopeful added that Tillerson and Lavrov's first meeting Wednesday is an opportunity to make up for previous diplomatic fumbles.
"The first time Lavrov met with Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, it was an embarrassment," he said. "She tried to be cute and instead looked stupid."
He said the foreign minister had "made a fool out of" Tillerson's immediate predecessor John Kerry.
"Kerry is nice and pleasant, wants to know what the next gourmet restaurant is they're going to, and Lavrov just knew that Kerry didn't matter," he added.
Before their meeting, Lavrov told reporters that Russia questioned the "ambiguous" and "contradictory" statements from the Trump administration, according to CNBC.
His deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, was more harsh, saying "In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We'll hope that this doesn't become the substance of American policy."
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