Inside the Republican cloakroom, one joke McConnell enjoyed telling was about Trump’s former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, a cabinet member he had liked. In 2017, the State Department had strongly denied Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” “Do you know why Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’?” McConnell would dryly ask colleagues in his Kentucky drawl. “Because he called him a ‘fucking moron.’ ”
