US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he has “total confidence” in his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after the latter denied having offered to resign from his cabinet and dismissed as “petty nonsense” a media report that he had called the President a “moron”. The NBC news had reported that Tillerson came close to resigning this summer but was requested to stay in the job until the end of the year. The White House and the State Department denied the story.
“Total confidence in Rex. I have total confidence,” Trump told reporters travelling with him in las Vegas. “I’m very honoured by his comments. It was fake news. It was a totally phony story,” Trump said as he slammed media reports about writing a story which was inaccurate.
“It was made up. It was made up by NBC. They just made it up,” he alleged and in another tweet the President sought an apology from NBC news. Heather Nauert, the State Department Spokesperson, said Tillerson never used that word. “That Secretary (Tillerson) did not use that type of language to speak about the US President,” she told reporters at her daily news conference.