US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ducked, danced and sidestepped the question of whether he called President Donald Trump a "moron," dismissing the brouhaha as the "petty stuff" of Washington.
Though they keep coming, Tillerson insisted on Sunday the persistent queries weren't hindering his mission as the nation's top diplomat.
Asked about a leading GOP senator's comment - "You cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state" - Tillerson would have none of it.
"I checked," he said during a news show interview. "I'm fully intact."
Again and again, Tillerson declined to attest to the accuracy of the report about his use of the word "moron" to describe the commander in chief.
Tillerson said he was "not dignifying the question with an answer," reprising his response from earlier this month, the morning the story broke, when he used an extraordinary televised statement to insist he had nothing but respect for Trump.
"I'm not making a game out of it," Tillerson said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.
Asked once more, he replied: "I'm not playing."
Yet Tillerson has let others play it on his behalf. He previously dispatched State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to flatly deny he called the president a "moron".
It was unclear why Tillerson was unwilling to repeat what his spokeswoman said but the continuing questions have brought his strained relationship with the president into renewed focus.
Tillerson insisted the relationship is solid and that the continuing public focus on whether he's being undermined by the president has not impeded his ability to succeed in his role.
Despite Tillerson's attempts to show he's in lockstep with the president, the NBC News report of his "moron" comment infuriated Trump, who publicly challenged Tillerson to an IQ test.
"And I can tell you who is going to win," Trump told Forbes magazine.
