After State Secretary Rex Tillerson called Trump a moron and slandered his knowledge (or lack thereof) of foreign policy, the President proposed an “IQ tests faceoff.”
In a press conference earlier this month, Tillerson said the president “is smart” but did not deny calling him a “moron.”
Trump fired back at Tillerson in an interview, stating: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.” The dare confirms the strained relationship between the two.
Even if the friction is palpable, when reporters asked him about it, Trump said: “We have a very good relationship. We disagree on a couple of things. Sometimes I’d like him to be a little bit tougher. But other than that, we have a very good relationship.”
In the same interview, the President teased upcoming economic-development legislation that “nobody knows about” and would penalize companies that move operations overseas, as well as offering incentives for those that stay in the United States.
Trump also stated that he is working on “an economic-development bill, which I think will be fantastic. Which nobody knows about. Which you are hearing about for the first time.” He added the policy is “both a carrot and a stick.”
Trump had previously undercut his secretary of state by tweeting that he was “wasting his time” by negotiating with North Korea over their nuclear arsenal.
I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
…Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
In the interview, the President said that these comments are not undermining Tillerson’s work, but strengthened it: “I’m not undermining, I think I’m actually strengthening authority.”
After all of this, reporters questioned Trump asking if he had undercut Tillerson, to which he responded: “No, I didn’t undercut anybody. I don’t believe in undercutting people.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has shown an unusual interest with his IQ score, as he has insisted that he has a higher one than Barack Obama, George Bush, and Jon Stewart.
He has also challenged Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to an IQ test and repeatedly denigrated Rick Perry’s IQ, saying he should have been subject to test before being allowed to participate in a Republican primary debate.
Trump also said that he didn’t fill many jobs throughout the federal government on purpose, including at the State Department, where many of the top positions remain vacant.
The President said: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be because you don’t need them, I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary. They have hundreds of thousands of people.”
Article inspired by The Washington Post/Trump proposes IQ tests’ faceoff with Tillerson after secretary of state calls him a ‘moron’.