In 2014, while Barack Obama was president, Donald Trump tweeted a cartoon that showed one of the founding fathers of the United States saying, “I keep thinking we should include something in the Constitution in case the people elect a ****** moron.”
On Wednesday, when Trump was president, the tweet circulated on social media again amid reports that his own secretary of state had called him a “moron.”
The cartoon was drawn by Dan Collins , an artist whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines.
On Wednesday, he noted the re-emergence of the “Founding Fathers” cartoon on his Facebook.
Its revival came as news emerged that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had allegedly called Trump a moron following a meeting at the Pentagon on July 20.
An NBC report suggested that Tillerson was considering leaving his job as the White House’s top diplomat.
Coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump on Globalnews.ca:
Tillerson denied that he ever considered leaving, but he didn’t deny having called the president a moron.
“There has never been consideration in my mind to leave,” he said Wednesday.
For his part, Trump called NBC’s report “fake news,” saying the network was “more dishonest than even CNN.”
The NBC News story said that Tillerson was ready to leave his post over the summer after he had clashed with Trump over policy issues such as Iran and Qatar.
Tillerson had reportedly tried to urge the president to make decisions that would have been contrary to his policy positions.
The “moron” comment allegedly came at a meeting that followed Trump saying he had thought about firing America’s top commander overseeing the war in Afghanistan. Trump had also allegedly compared military decision-making to renovations at an upscale New York restaurant.
R.C. Hammond, a State Department spokesperson, denied that Tillerson called the president a moron.
- With files from The Associated Press