Im not going to deal with petty stuff like that. He didnt deny calling the president a moron. The secretary did not use that type of language. He did not say that. Made up by nbc. They just made it up. For the record, nbc has total confidence in its reporting. Fake news. It was a totally phony story. The president can call this fake news but he himself has made it very clear that hes broken with his own secretary of state on a whole host of policy issues. He ends up not being supported in the way that i would hope a secretary of state would be supported. I dont think anyone in the world thinks that Rex Tillerson speaks with the full backing and authority of this president. A president undermining cabinet, cabinet members understood mining the president , this is the most bizarre thing i have ever watched. Secretary tillerson, secretary mattis and chief of staff kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos. In an exclusive report this morning, nbc news revealed that the secretary of state referred to the president as a moron in a room full of witnesses at the pentagon. The president s response to that report today was that it was fake news. The nbc news report said tillersons stunned a handful of senior level officials calling the president a moron after a tense twohour 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 20th 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 highend new york restaurant. According to participants in the meeting. Multiple Senior Administration officials told nbc news the secretary tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the white house. Officials tell nbc news that Vice President mike pence counsels tillerson 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. Officials said that the administration beset would have struggled to manage the fallout from a cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year. The Vice President s office denied that mike pence and Rex Tillerson discussed a possible resignation. Today, secretary tillerson held a rare press conference, very rare thing for him to do. He did it specifically to respond to the nbc news report. The Vice President has never had to persuade me to remain as secretary of state because i have never considered leaving this post. I serve at the appointment of the president and im here for as long as the president feels i can be useful to achieving his objectives. And then, of course, came the question about referring to the president as a moron. Did you address the main headline of this story that you called the president a moron . If not, where do you think the reports im not going to deal with petty stuff like that. I mean, this is what i dont understand about washington. Again, you know, im not from this place. But the places i come from, we dont deal with that kind of petty nonsense. And the world noticed that the secretary of state did not deny calling the path moron. But President Trump apparently heard something no one else did. He tweeted the nbc news story has just been totally refuted by secretary tillerson and vp pence. It is fake news. They should issue an apology to america. Today in las vegas, the president was asked about secretary tillersons comments, the question did not clearly refer to the moron comment and so the president seemed to be responding to secretary tillersons comments at his press conference today. Im very honored by his comments. It was made up. It was made up by nbc. They just made it up. Thank you all. Total confidence in rex. I have total confidence. Thank you very much, everybody. Tonight, the daily beast reports that some aides in the white house held out hope that secretary tillerson would offer his resignation following nbcs reporting. Three white house officials speaking as unnamed sources to the daily beast spoke about, quote, how they wished he would just leave. In a Perfect World he would have quit right then and there another said. Buzzfeed is reporting that one expressed confidence do due to a suicide pact. Forged between defense secretary james mattis, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and all three vowed to leave in the president makes moves against one of them. During the transition, when president elect trump was Holding Virtual public auditions for secretary of state, including this one with mitt romney, republican senator bob corker publicly took his name out of consideration for secretary of state. Today, senator corker said this. I think secretary tillerson, secretary mattis and chief of staff kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos. And i support them very much. Joining us now, eli stokel, also with us max bood, and also with us, betty woodruff. So, max, did i just hear the chairman of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee refer to the president as chaos after his secretary of state has apparently referred to him as a moron . Thats a pretty im sorry on the day, lawrence. I would have to say, i mean, what can you do except kind of laugh . This is like a bad reality tv show. It is like what the heck is going to happen tomorrow . I mean, any other administration this would be unbelievable. For the Trump Administration, its, you know, more of the same basically. It is. Eli, the one reference in the nbc news reporting about this that i dont quite get is the part where it reports the people in the room to have been stunned when tillerson used the word moron. We live in a country where the one of the least stunning things you can say about the current president of the United States is moron. Its manager thats said throughout the country by millions of people every day. Whats to be stunned about in that room . Well, that may be so but this is the secretary of state after a meeting with the president , somebody that agreed to take the job and work for the president whose flaws all but all known already so, you know, obviously theres a reason why hes yet to resign, why he continues to stay in this job and subject himself to this ongoing humiliation of basically no clout, of meeting with diplomats that know he doesnt speak for this president and being humiliated by the president on twitter at the president s whim as he was over the weekend on the north korea stuff. This is sort of a bad reality show and we are past the scene in the reality show both of these characters have sort of talked to the producer off camera and explained how they really feel through the tweets and other comments and yet thats still out there sort of, you know, the scene continues and they act like they like each other. Rex acts like he wants to be there and even though he as i understand will be lucky to last a year and so the idea to be there forever, you know, the whole Performance Today just wasnt really all that believable nor was the president s statement that he has full confidence in rex as he said before he left vegas. Betsy, this is a president whos publicly attacked his attorney general. Hes publicly in effect attacked Rex Tillerson saying that its useless for Rex Tillerson to try to do anything diplomatically with north korea. And so, in a way, theres an unsurprising component of this much friction between the president and his cabinet. Exactly. And this friction is nothing new. Remember, secretary tillerson refusing to disavow the reports that he called the president a moron, thats not the first time hes opted out of going on the record defending the president. Back when the charlottesville events happened, secretary tillerson refused to defend the way the president responded to the death there and the ensuing chaos. Thats something that was very much noted in the white house. Additionally, some of secretary tillersons closest allies has, spokesman hammond and chief of staff peterland have built up significant groups of enemies in the white house. Theyre not well loved there. And secretary tillerson himself hasnt necessarily done the work that you would expect from a washington outsider to develop allies in congress which is why you arent hearing many folks on the hill with the exception of corker sort of surge to his defense. Instead, we are seeing a secretary of state under siege. Of course, the challenge for him is that he is jeopardized, he is put his entire professional reputation on the line to head to the state department and hes forced to watch state be just diminished day by day. Its a really tough position for him to be in. That said, i think the reports are correct its unlikely hell step out because secretary price was the guy who had to get out of dodge this week so that seems to give tillerson a bit of time. But, max, to most observers, no one has done more damage to the state department than Rex Tillerson himself. Absolutely. I mean, when i think about whos been a worse secretary of state, i kind of scratch my head and cant think of anybody, lawrence. He is probably the worst of the last century. The way hes approached that job is just very curious because hes been really focused on this minutia and he doesnt have undersecretaries, doesnt have assistant secretaries, not speaking to the press, he is not, you know, taking a high profile policy stance. I mean, it is almost like the mindset is to shed underperforming divisions to get the stock price up and doesnt seem to have a conception of a secretary of state does. Now that said, i mean, donald trump is also to blame because he is not a guy who believes in diplomacy clearly and undercuts tulerson at every step. If i blame tillerson for anything its the fact hes not done a good job of managing trump in the way that jim mattis, for example, did a pretty good job of managing to steer him along and not getting implicated in some of the craziness around the white house and tillerson has not figured out how to do that and i think it is pretty clear everybody understands were headed for a rexit and rex wants to stick around at least a year and wont seem like he was forced out too fast and not going to be long for this job. Eli, as to the difference that trump has the different regard he has for the people around him, it seems if the only way you get any kind of reasonable or possibly respectful dealings with donald trump is if you have the title general. Without the title general, which Rex Tillerson does not have, he seems to be treated differently than this defense secretary. Yeah. Title general or perhaps last name trump. But, you are right. Rex, this is sort of an interesting pairing. He was sort of entered the game late in the secretary of state sweepstakes and unlikely pick, sort of a dark horse and he and trump supposedly hit it off. Theyre so different. Not that just he is not a general. It is, you know, this is a sort of underspoken texan who likes to navigate things behind the scene. Spent much of the career at exxon behind closed doors and very uncomfortable with the public component of the job and trump nothing if not a public fig chur. The presidency is televised and tweeted and thats the presidency. They just doesnt really get each other. Theres friction on a lot of policy debates, pretty much every Foreign Policy debate we have seen and it is interesting that rex has been certainly not the only one to feel frustrated. Sources tell me that even john kelly threatened to resign numerous times. Yet hes still there. Has dwroet really to our knowledge incur the president s wrath whereas secretary tillerson for whatever reason sort of been in the doghouse it seems like for quite a listening time. Betsy, there seems to be an adults versus the children component to this. You have some people in the white house saying they were hoping that Rex Tillerson would leave. You have others in the administration saying that, you know, without the secretary of state, without the secretary of defense, this administration would be unthinkable. You have the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee saying that Rex Tillerson is one of the people who saves us from chaos. The chaos presumably that would be visited upon us if donald trump was given kind of an unfettered, you know, frame work within which to work. So these cheerleaders, these antitillerson cheerleaders in the white house, we dont know how many there are without their names versus the adults. What do you make of the size of those factions . There is a substantial dislike and criticism of tillerson, not only in the white house, but also on capitol hill. I would say of all the quote unquote adults we have referred to, secretary mattis is really the only member of trumps cabinet that thus far managed to preserve the reputation. The rest of the cabinet members to varying degrees taking significant and many cases selfimposed hits to their reputations. That said, look, it is important to remember how much criticism, how much dislike, how much venom even is directed at secretary of state tillerson and in turn how much his own staff are sort of scratching back in a way that sometimes proves counterproductive. In the nbc story that ran this morning, rc hammond, the top spokesman gave a quote trying to throw nikki haley under the bus saying only time pence and tillerson had a challenging conversation was when they were talking about whether or not haley was doing a good job. Hammond later had to walk that quote back. It is another example of the way secretary tillerson and some of his closest staffers have appeared to have been working overtime just to make enemies and i think thats why there really are some claws out for tillerson this evening. Max, these two things can be simultaneously true. Rex tillerson can be the worst secretary of state in history and he can be right about donald trump. Yeah. Lets not lose sight of the elephant in the room here which is that, you know, this was a gaffe in the michael kensly sense which is a gaffe in washington is when a politician tell it is truth and this is an obvious truth what everybody acknowledges and, oops, Rex Tillerson went and said it and if you have to look at Donald TrumpsJob Performance just the last few days and the way hes handled hurricane maria, does anybody think that anything hes done refutes the notion hes mentally challenged . Who would advise a president with a wit of common sense to attack hurricane survivors or to attack a mayor whose town is inundated with floodwaters . And yet this is the second time this year that trump has attacked a mayor after a major disaster because previously he attacked the mayor of london after a terrorist attack. And then, of course, you had that inadvertent comic trump visit to puerto rico and the lasting image is throwing paper towels. It is just one gaffe after another or him going to a golf club and presiding over a Golf Tournament instead of working on Hurricane Relief and then did kating the hurricane the golf trophy to the hurricane survivors. You know . Which is a little bit like, you know, Marie Antoinette saying let them eat 9 irons. Any president would not be doing this and getting, you know, Approval Ratings in the mid30s. And the striking thing about the day is the only mutterings out of the white house and the unnamed Sources Group is that, you know, is that we wish tillerson quit. What you didnt get from any of the unnamed sources is heres the affirmative defense against the charge that donald trump is a moron. Here is the case that proves donald trump is not a moron. We got silence on that front today. Eli, max and betsy, thank you all for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. Sure thing. Coming up, what the Senate Intelligence committee wants to know about that dosier a former british spy created about donald trump and the Trump Campaign involving russia. David corn who first reported the very existence of that dosier will join us next. Today, the white house pulled back from the one good thing that donald trump actually did say in puerto rico yesterday. It was the most important thing he said in puerto rico yesterday and its getting no support from his administration. Each year sarah climbs 58,007 steps. Thats the height of mount everest. Because each day she chooses to take the stairs. At work, at home. Even on the escalator. That can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. Scholls orthotics. Clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. So keep on climbing, sarah. Youre killing it. Dr. Scholls. Born to move. The issue of collusion is still open. That we continue to investigate both intelligence and witnesses and that were not in a position where we will come to any type of temporary finding on that until weve completed the process. That was republican senator richard burr giving an update on the intelligence committees investigation into russias influence on the election and whether the Trump Campaign colluded with russia during that campaign. The bottom line, russia did interfere. Thats the committees conclusion. But whether russia colluded with the Trump Campaign is urn investigation. Today, reuters reports that special prosecutor mueller is investigating the dossier by former british spy steel and it makes some personal allegations about donal