He gave a press conference Wednesday morning (broadcast and streamed live on multiple channels/pages, including Politico) during which he sought to condemn those reports as essentially rumors spread by people who want to sow discord in D.C. in order to advance their own agendas (or something).
When he first walked out and started going through a litany of compliments of his fellow cabinet members, there was a second or so when it looked as though the former Exxon CEO-turned-top U.S. diplomat may have been about to resign, but that notion was quickly squashed.
"What we have accomplished, we have done as a team," he said of the administration's overseas work.
On Wednesday morning, a CNBC report citing unnamed sources who claimed Tillerson called Trump a "moron" after a July 20 cabinet meeting and that Vice President Mike Pence had to convince him not to resign was everywhere. It follows a couple of Trump tweets over the weekend that contradicted Tillerson's remarks about maintaining a dialogue with North Korea (instead of, you know, bombing the crap out of them outright, which Trump seems to want). While he wouldn't say whether the president made him hold a hastily assembled press conference or not (oh, come on!), he denied ever wanting to leave his job.
"The vice president has never had to persuade me to remain secretary of state because I have never considered leaving this post," Tillerson said. "I value the friendship and the counsel of the vice president, and I admire his leadership within President Trump's administration to address the many important agendas of President Trump, both from a foreign policy perspective and from a… domestic perspective."
The president also totally didn't make him say he was the opposite of a moron.
"He loves his country. He puts Americans and America first," Tillerson said of Trump. "He's smart, he demands results wherever he goes, and he holds those accountable for whether he's done the job they've asked him to do."
But when it came to the question of whether he actually called Trump a moron, he didn't exactly deny it.
"I'm not gonna deal with petty stuff like that. This is what I don't understand about Washington. I'm not from this place, but the places I come from, we don't deal with that petty nonsense," Tillerson said. "It is intended to do nothing but divide people, and I'm just not going to be part of that effort to divide this administration."
So, in other words… maybe?
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 6, 2017.
