president of the united states. he was the only one along with the vice president who was elected. but nonetheless, he wanted to hear every point of view and then decide and indeed on the iran deal he learned every single piece of that deal. he knew every single detail. as did secretary kerry, secretary munoz and the whole team that worked on this was a whole of government effort and a very disciplined way, and quite frankly, if the trump administration scotches this deal, i can t imagine what team will put it back together again. and talk about what you see as in the state department now with secretary tillerson. he s quoted as calling the president a moron. he doesn t deny that quote. he s given the opportunity to deny. he doesn t deny it. we see the white house s reaction to this. basically confirmation. a more unnamed white house sources confirming that this happened. some saying they firmly believe that tillerson did say this.
it. trump, tillerson calling trump a moron, ridiculous. undercut him, ridiculous. well, the word she is not using is false and she can t use that word because it s not false. those things are ridiculously true and that s a big problem for the trump white house. jennifer, one thing and i noted this last night also that the white house got gotten around to is defending the president against the charge that he is a moron. you know, even they have limits to what they can do. what can i say? i mean, none of this would have any credence and no one would believe this is going on if we had a president fit to be there and fit on commander in chief and seems credible because we know he s completely unschooled, unknowledgeable, erratic. he hasn t bothered to learn the job. of course it is true. what does surprise me, however, is that you have both tillerson and the president behaving sort
you know, it s interesting that not even the president s press secretary would deny that rex tillerson called the president a moron. she just said it was beneath him to comment. you know, this is such a storm to borrow a phrase. the other thing that s going on is that this keystone cop group of individuals is thinking of desert if iing the iran deal. puttinging at risk that deal without a backup plan and bluff through and see if the iranians come back to the table. allies are not on board. the russians, the chinese. is that another storm coming? wake up tomorrow and de-certify the deal? this is so preposterously destabling, so frightening i m sure for allies that, you know, one wonders, what is rex tillerson doing still there and hue mill yatding himself? why isn t the president so upset
today. is the president upset that his secretary of state didn t deny calling him a moron in his public remarks yesterday? look. as the secretary of state said, this is a petty, ridiculous accusation and, frankly, i think it s beneath the secretary of state to weigh in on every rumor out there. the spokesperson, however, did come out and clarified that the secretary of state had never used those words. what s your response john? undercut the secretary of state. sarah? just quickly. the premise of the question is ridiculous. the president can t undercut his own cabinet. the president is the leader of the cabinet. he sets the tone. he sets the agenda. and so, jennifer, kristen welker takes the place in white house history as the first reporter in history to ask the question, is the president upset that his secretary of state didn t deny calling him a moron in his public remarks yesterday? yes. we have come to that. we have come to that.
even though they with respect in the room. and that s sort of suggests there s an atmosphere there in the trump administration where it s not surprising and ultimately not surprising that a secretary would call the president a moron. i don t think rex tillerson wanted to be secretary of state from the day he was confirmed and asked by the president to be secretary of state. i think he thought it was his duh toy do. he s made common cause with secretary mattis and nonetheless this is a man unhappy. he doesn t have a staff. he has only a small group of people he holds close to him, a loner and very interesting. when secretary sessions was being humiliated by the president of the united states, you had many people come to his defense. even democrats who didn t vote for his confirmation thought it was outrageous. quite frankly, i haven t seen a whole lot of people come to the defense of secretary tillerson because he s really made himself a loner in washington and you can t get things do