President Donald Trump fired back at his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday morning after reports surfaced that his former top diplomat told a House committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin was more prepared than Trump ahead of a meeting in 2017.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the president believed their meeting would be short, but instead, as the Post put it, the meeting “ballooned into a globe-spanning two-hour-plus session involving deliberations on a variety of geopolitical issues.”
The meeting between Tillerson and the House Foreign Affairs Committee lasted for around seven hours, according to the report.
“We spent a lot of time in the conversation talking about how Putin seized every opportunity to push what he wanted,” a committee aide told the Post. “There was a discrepancy in preparation, and it created an unequal footing.”
On Thursday morning, Trump pushed back, quoting a “dumb as a rock” insult he previously used to describe his former secretary of state.
“Rex Tillerson, a man who is ‘dumb as a rock’ and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State, made up a story (he got fired) that I was out-prepared by Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Hamburg, Germany. I don’t think Putin would agree. Look how the U.S. is doing!” the president tweeted on Thursday morning.
Rex Tillerson, a man who is “dumb as a rock” and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State, made up a story (he got fired) that I was out-prepared by Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Hamburg, Germany. I don’t think Putin would agree. Look how the U.S. is doing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2019
In late 2017, reports surfaced that Tillerson called Trump a “fucking moron.” Tillerson then held a press conference where he said he never wanted to leave his position.
Trump replaced Tillerson with now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in March 2018.
Trump calling Tillerson ill-equipped is interesting, because as people noted, it was Trump who hired him.
The rough thing for Trump is he came into office and was stuck working with all these Obama holdovers like Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions and Scott Pruitt https://t.co/oQsOPSDX56
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 23, 2019
https://twitter.com/C_Fish07/status/1131557284205813761
What does this say about the president? He appointed a man that is “dumb as a rock” and ill prepared and ill equipped for the job that the president selected him for. That’s a glimpse of the president’s (lack of) judgment. https://t.co/lCPcMWft1h
— Bill Victor (@billyv_33) May 23, 2019
https://twitter.com/darth/status/1131545412739817473
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