If you thought last week’s reports concerning Rex Tillerson allegedly calling Donald Trump a “f*cking moron” were old news, think again. Sure, the state secretary more or less denied the supposed name-calling in a rare press conference, but subsequent reports detailing the president’s anger with Tillerson (over television ratings, no less) and more volatile Twitter rants aimed at North Korea have kept the story fresh. To make matters worse, Trump doused the eternal flames of f*cking-moron-gate with an apparent challenge for his top cabinet official — that they should compare their IQ tests.
“I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests,” the president told Forbes in a new interview. “And I can tell you who is going to win.” If that alone weren’t problematic enough, however, Trump decided to toss a few more grenades in Tillerson’s direction — especially when their competing approaches to North Korea came up. “He was wasting his time,” he said of his state secretary’s latest attempt to reopen dialogue with Pyongyang. “I’m not undermining. I think I’m actually strengthening authority.”
Aside from keeping his apparent feud with Tillerson alive, Trump also dug in on his White House’s widely known opinion that anything accomplished by President Barack Obama (and others before him) is fair game for the chopping block. Obamacare is the most popular target, but it’s not the only one:
The same approach comes through in foreign policy, again and again, whether it’s the Iran deal, the Paris climate agreement or, especially, free-trade deals. Doesn’t he feel a responsibility to honor agreements from previous administrations?
President Trump has a quick response: “No.”
He also debuted “an economic-development bill” that he claimed “nobody knows about. Which you are hearing about for the first time … Economic-development incentives for companies. Incentives for companies to be here.” Most of what Trump told Forbes here was, per his many previous public rants regarding new policy initiatives, largely nonsensical. Or as the article itself put it, “And above all, he sells”: “It’s both a carrot and a stick. It is an incentive to stay. But it is perhaps even more so — if you leave, it’s going to be very tough for you to think that you’re going to be able to sell your product back into our country.”
As far out as many of the president’s comments to Forbes were, however, most readers who first encountered it Tuesday morning couldn’t get over the IQ test challenge.
Dear Rex Tillerson: Yes, please do an IQ competition with this moron. Thanks. pic.twitter.com/xBdueAlM60
— Kaili Joy Gray (@KailiJoy) October 10, 2017
Just imagine. pic.twitter.com/C6goMMUlne
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) October 10, 2017
The only way to settle this is with a live IQ test. Pay per view. The Donald vs King Rex.
Honestly, I would totally watch.
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) October 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/917732360900276224
https://twitter.com/KT_So_It_Goes/status/917721651667722240
https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/917729963020836864
(Via Forbes)