Firing Rex Tillerson via Twitter was bad enough, but President Trump just managed to one-up himself with his former secretary of state.Trump attacked Tillerson on Friday, calling him “lazy as hell,” “dumb as a rock” and without “the mental capacity needed” to serve in his role.In case it wasn't clear, Trump “couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.”The president’s afternoon rage-tweet followed some candid criticism from Tillerson, who called Trump “pretty undisciplined” during a rare public appearance Thursday in Houston at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Tillerson also spoke about the many times he had to rein in the president from pursuing options outside the law.
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“So often, the president would say, 'Here's what I want to do and here's how I want to do it,' and I would have to say to him, 'Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way. It violates the law,'" Tillerson, a former energy executive, said during the event, according to the Houston Chronicle.This isn’t the first time Trump and Tillerson have been at odds. The ex-secretary of state once reportedly deemed Trump a “moron” in a meeting at the Pentagon. And Tillerson distanced himself from Trump’s rhetoric after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, which Trump said was the result of violence on “both sides.”Still, Trump defended Tillerson on multiple occasions prior to his unceremonious firing in March writing on Twitter in December 2017 that he and Tillerson didn’t agree on everything, but “we work well together.”Upon Tillerson’s Senate confirmation in February 2017 Trump, again on Twitter rejoiced: “he will be a star!”Cover image: President Donald Trump points at a member of the audience while speaking the 2018 Project Safe Neighborhoods National Conference at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center in Kansas City, Mo., Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)