I saw what you did there you crafty fellow you! :fencing:
You know that nobody said that he said it "publicly". Unless you think the meeting held in a secure room in the Pentagon known as "The Tank" with Cabinet members and National Security Team members is
"in public"!
I would respectfully submit to you my friend, that the story is congruent with the facts we know and "on the balance of probabilities" the following account seems to have the "ring of truth to it" :
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/wh...ury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451
[FONT=&]WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time.
[/FONT][FONT=&]The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.
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[FONT=&]Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.
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[FONT=&]In an unscheduled statement to reporters Wednesday morning, Tillerson directly addressed that version of events, saying, "I have never considered leaving this post."
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[FONT=&]He praised Trump's foreign policy agenda, saying he was part of a team to "make America great again." But he did not deny calling the president a "moron," declining to address that remark directly and saying, "I'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that."
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[FONT=&]In a briefing Wednesday afternoon, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Tillerson did not use the word "moron" to descibe the president. "The secretary did not use that type of language to speak about the president of the Unites States," Nauert said. "He did not say that."
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[FONT=&]The president was asked about Tillerson's remarks after touring the University Medical Center in Las Vegas Wednesday and said, "I am very honored by his comments, it was fake news, it was a totally phony story." Trump added that he has "total confidence in Rex."
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[FONT=&]While it's unclear if he was aware of the incident at the Pentagon, officials said Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year.
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[FONT=&]Officials said that the administration, beset then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would have struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year of Trump’s presidency.
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[FONT=&]Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately, a White House official said. The official said progress has since been made.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Yet the disputes have not abated. This weekend, tensions spilled out into the open once again when the president seemed to publicly chide Tillerson on his handling of the crisis with North Korea.
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[FONT=&]NBC News spoke with a dozen current and former senior administration officials for this article, as well as others who are close to the president.
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[FONT=&]Tillerson, who was in Texas for his son’s wedding in late July when Trump addressed the Boy Scouts, had threatened not to return to Washington, according to three people with direct knowledge of the threats. His discussions with retired Gen. John Kelly, who would soon be named Trump’s second chief of staff, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, helped initially to reassure him, four people with direct knowledge of the exchanges said.
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[FONT=&]After Tillerson’s return to Washington, Pence arranged a meeting with him, according to three officials. During the meeting, Pence gave Tillerson a “pep talk,” one of these officials said, but also had a message: the secretary needed to figure out how to move forward within Trump’s policy framework.
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[FONT=&]Kelly and Mattis have been Tillerson’s strongest allies in the cabinet. In late July, “they did beg him to stay,” a senior administration official said. “They just wanted stability.”
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[FONT=&]Tillerson and Trump clashed over a series of key foreign policy issues over the summer, including Iran and Qatar.
Trump chafed at Tillerson’s attempts to push him – privately and publicly – toward decisions that were at odds with his policy positions, according to officials. Hammond said Tillerson has had no policy differences with Trump. “The president’s policy is his policy,” Hammond said.
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[FONT=&]In August, Trump was furious with Tillerson over his response to a question about the president’s handling of the racially charged and deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, administration officials said. Trump had said publicly that white nationalists and neo-Nazi sympathizers shared blame for violence with those who came out to protest them.[/FONT]
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“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson said at the time, when asked on “Fox News Sunday” about Trump’s comments.
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[FONT=&]Hammond said Trump addressed the issue with Tillerson in a meeting the next day. He said that during the meeting, Trump congratulated another White House official, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, for his performance on the Sunday news talk shows. Bossert had defended Trump’s controversial pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
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[FONT=&]The president, according to Hammond, told Tillerson he was upset with his comments when he saw them the first time.
But, Hammond said Trump told Tillerson, after watching the interview a second and third time, the president understood that Tillerson was trying to say Trump is the best person to convey what his values are.
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[FONT=&]Still, the message was clear that Trump wanted Tillerson to defend him more, Hammond said.
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[FONT=&]The frustrations run both ways. Tillerson stunned a handful of senior administration officials when he called the president a “moron” after a tense two-hour long meeting in a secure room at the Pentagon called "The Tank," according to three officials who were present or briefed on the incident.
The July 20 meeting came a day after a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Afghanistan policy where Trump rattled his national security advisers by suggesting he might fire the top U.S. commander of the war and comparing the decision-making process on troop levels to the renovation of a high-end New York restaurant, according to participants in the meeting.
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[FONT=&]It is unclear whether Trump was told of Tillerson’s outburst after the Pentagon meeting or to what extent the president was briefed on Tillerson’s plan to resign earlier in the year.
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[FONT=&]Tillerson also has complained about being publicly undermined by the president on the administration’s foreign policy agenda, officials said.
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[FONT=&]Those strains were on display this past weekend when Tillerson said, to the White House’s surprise, that the U.S. is attempting diplomatic talks with North Korea.
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[FONT=&]Trump quickly took the opposite position, writing on Twitter “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...,” using his latest epithet for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]“...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!” Trump added in a second tweet.
etc etc ...you can read the rest here https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/wh...ury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451
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