WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried Tuesday to smooth over tensions in their relationship during a White House lunch after the president proposed that the two "compare IQ tests."
In an interview with Forbes magazine published Tuesday morning, Trump was asked about reports that Tillerson called him a "moron" after a classified briefing this summer.
"I think it's fake news," Trump said, "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 White House and the State Department suggested Tuesday that the president was joking -- trying to make light of what they describe as inaccurate reports of tension.
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"The president certainly never implied that the secretary of state was not incredibly intelligent," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in Tuesday afternoon's news briefing. She added that Trump has "100 percent confidence" in Tillerson and admonished reporters for taking the president's comment so seriously.
"Maybe you guys should get a sense of humor and try it sometime," she said.
But administration officials and outside advisers say Trump has been frustrated by what he sees as Tillerson's traditionalist world view on a host of issues. Tillerson had advocated for staying in the Paris climate deal and the Iran nuclear pact, and he has pushed for further negotiations with North Korea.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis have worked to soothe tensions between the two men. They have privately stressed the imperative of stability atop the State Department at a critical moment for the nation. Trump is trying to manage the North Korea nuclear crisis and is planning an ambitious diplomatic trip to Asia in early November.
Trump met for lunch Tuesday with Tillerson and Mattis in the president's private dining room at the White House. Sanders characterized the lunch as "a great visit."
Shortly before the lunch, a reporter asked Trump whether he had undercut Tillerson with his comments to Forbes.
"No, I didn't undercut anybody," Trump said during a brief media appearance in the Oval Office, as he sat beside former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during a meeting to discuss foreign affairs. "I don't believe in undercutting people."
CORKER CRITICISM
Also on Tuesday, Trump escalated his criticism of U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, a two-term Republican from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, by giving him the nickname "Liddle Bob."
The president suggested that Corker was somehow tricked when he told a reporter from The New York Times that the president was reckless and could stumble into a nuclear war.
"The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!"
The New York Times on Tuesday disputed the notion that it had tricked Corker. After Trump said Sunday that Corker "didn't have the guts" to run for another term, a Times reporter interviewed Corker by telephone and recorded the call with the senator's knowledge and consent. Corker's staff also recorded the call, and he said he wanted the newspaper to do the same.
"I know they're recording it, and I hope you are, too," Corker told the reporter.
Corker said in the interview that Trump ran his presidency like "a reality show" and that his reckless threats could set the nation "on the path to World War III." Corker said that Trump's staff had to stop him from doing more damage.
Trump on Tuesday rejected the suggestion that he was risking a nuclear war.
"We were on the wrong path before," he said. "All you have to do is take a look. If you look over the last 25 years through numerous administrations, we were on a path to a very big problem, a problem like this world has never seen. We're on the right path right now, believe me."
Republican senators Tuesday largely avoided siding with Trump or with Corker.
"I have a lot of respect for Sen. Corker and what he brings to the Senate, but I think the president is leading in the right direction and I'm supportive of what he's doing," Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the GOP leadership, told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol. "I would encourage them both to stop what they're doing and get focused on what we need to be doing."
Sen. Cory Gardner, another high-ranking Republican, issued a similar plea to reporters at home in Colorado.
"I'm not going to get in the middle of this fight, but I don't think it's helpful to have finger-pointing and name-calling on either side," Gardner said. "We need to have people focusing on one thing and one thing only, and that's what we're going to do to create more opportunity for the American people."
But Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania, who like Corker has announced his plans to retire, said more Republicans should be willing to speak out against Trump.
"What I believe Republicans should do in Congress is this: work constructively with him and support him when he's on the right track, check him when he's moving in a bad direction, and call him out if he makes outlandish statements or offensive statements," Dent said.
Still, Trump has plenty of loyalists on Capitol Hill, several of whom voiced displeasure with Corker's remarks. Corker's fellow Tennessean, Rep. Diane Black, a Republican, said in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday that "if you talk about an adult day care center, I'm sorry, but I think the Senate is an adult day care center. They can't get anything done over there."
In response to Trump's criticisms, Corker said in a tweet Sunday that "It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center."
"We have been waiting for repeal and replace," Black said, referring to the Senate's failure to pass legislation to undo the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act after the House passed its own version of a bill.
Former top Trump strategist Steve Bannon lashed out at Corker and others in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity late Monday, calling on Corker to resign and threatening to take out incumbent GOP senators in primaries.
"We are declaring war on the Republican establishment," Bannon said on Fox News. "Sen. Corker is an absolute disgrace. If Bob Corker has any honor, any decency, he should resign immediately."
TAX CUTS, OTHER ISSUES
Corker has been a longtime deficit hawk and has expressed concern about a tax plan that would add as much as $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to the budget resolution under consideration.
Some White House officials said they expected Corker to still support the budget measure next week because he already voted for it in committee, but other advisers to Trump have said privately that they worry that the president was sacrificing his agenda for another round of personal sniping. Trump said Tuesday that he was confident that the rupture with Corker would not sink his tax plan.
"I don't think so at all," he told reporters during the meeting with Kissinger. "I think we're well on our way. The people of this country want tax cuts. They want lower taxes."
In the Forbes interview, Trump teased "an economic-development bill, which I think will be fantastic. Which nobody knows about. Which you are hearing about for the first time." The president said the policy is "both a carrot and a stick," offering incentives for companies that stay in the United States and penalizing those that move operations overseas.
Trump on Tuesday also reaffirmed that he planned to sign an executive order Thursday intended to make it easier for some Americans to purchase less expensive health insurance.
"With Congress the way it is, I decided to take it upon myself," he told reporters.
Trump also accused Democrats -- with whom he has been trying to negotiate an immigration deal -- of being soft on border security.
"The problem with agreeing to a policy on immigration is that the Democrats don't want secure borders, they don't care about safety for U.S.A.," he wrote on Twitter.
Trump also took to Twitter late Tuesday in defense of his chief of staff, accusing "The Fake News" of trying to hurt Kelly "by saying he will soon be fired."
"This story is totally made up by the dishonest media," Trump tweeted. It was unclear which news outlets he was referring to.
Trump earlier told Forbes that he has purposefully not filled many jobs throughout the federal government, including at the State Department, where several top positions remain vacant.
"I'm generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be -- because you don't need them," Trump said. "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."
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Rucker of The Washington Post; by Jonathan Lemire, Matthew Lee, Josh Lederman, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Erica Werner, Julie Pace and Dan Elliott of The Associated Press; and by Peter Baker of The New York Times.
A Section on 10/11/2017