On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson brushed off reports that he was close to stepping down over the summer, frustrated over President Trump's fast and furious Twitter fingers and insufficient staffing, and one U.S. official believes he knows why Tillerson didn't resign, despite his annoyance.
The official told BuzzFeed News that Tillerson has a "suicide pact" with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, meaning if any one of the Cabinet secretaries becomes the target of Trump's ire, all three will leave together. One way of getting on Trump's bad side would be by calling him a "moron," which NBC News says Tillerson did following a meeting in July at the Pentagon. When asked by reporters on Wednesday if he did call Trump a moron, Tillerson replied that he doesn't "deal with petty stuff like that."
Later in the day, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denied that Tillerson ever called Trump a moron, with her excuse being that Tillerson would never utter such a word. "The secretary did not use that type of language to speak about the president of the United States," she said. "He does not use that language to speak about anyone."
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