President Trump tweeted that reports he would soon fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were “fake news,” and that “I call the final shots,” the New York Times reports.

The tweet came just hours after Tillerson called reports that the White House wants him to resign “laughable.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Wall Street Journal he was confused about rumors of his departure and said he would remain in the job “as long as the president thinks I’m useful.”

Said Tillerson: “Who in the world is telling you that stuff?”

When asked if Trump should be reelected, Tillerson “paused for a beat, then said, ‘Well, of course. … I mean, I don’t think about it, quite frankly, right now… We’ve got these things we’re dealing with, but yeah.'”

“Sir, we didn’t need to verify that he called you a moron, he did it behind your back.”

— MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle, responding on MSNBC to President Trump’s criticism that she never verified Rex Tillerson’s quote with him.

Washington Post: “The already tense relationship between the two headstrong men — one a billionaire former real estate developer, the other a former captain of the global oil industry — has ruptured into what some White House officials call an irreparable breach that will inevitably lead to Tillerson’s departure, whether immediately or not. Tillerson’s dwindling cohort of allies say he has been given an impossible job and is doing his best with it.”

“For months now, Trump has been piqued by rumors of disloyalty that have filtered up to him from Foggy Bottom, the home of the State Department… And as Tillerson has traveled the globe, Trump believes his top diplomat often seems more concerned with what the world thinks of the United States than with tending to the president’s personal image.”

“Meanwhile, Tillerson — who ran one of the world’s largest corporations with near-dictatorial control — has struggled to submit to the whims and wishes of a boss who governs by impulse.”

Jonathan Swan: “While there’s plenty of speculation that Tillerson will resign or be fired by Trump, I’ve heard nothing from any senior officials to corroborate those rumors.”

Said one senior administration official: “I think his saving grace may be that Mattis and Kelly have his back and there’s not a great desire for further shuffling in the cabinet at this time.”

However: “Not denying he called the President of the United States a moron ends any chance of him being a credible representative of the administration around the world.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refuted a report that said he was on the verge of resigning from his Cabinet post over the summer, CBS News reports.

Said Tillerson: “I have never considered leaving this post.”

He did not address the claim in the report that he called President Trump a “moron.”

Update: Stephanie Ruhle stands by her report: “My source didn’t just say he called him a moron. He said he called him an fucking moron.”

“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House,” NBC News reports.

“The tensions came to a head around the time President Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led.”

“Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a ‘moron,’ after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials.”

“Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately… Yet the disputes have not abated. This weekend, tensions spilled out into the open once again when the president seemed to publicly chide Tillerson on his handling of the crisis with North Korea.”