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Trump Just Challenged Rex Tillerson to an IQ Test

After the secretary of state reportedly called Trump a "moron," the president's looking to settle the score.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Photos by DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images and Alex Wong/Getty Images

Back in July, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a "fucking moron" in front of a few members of the president's Cabinet and national security team. Now, since Tillerson refused to deny the allegation, Trump has challenged the guy to compare their IQ scores.

"I think it's fake news, but if he did that, I guess we'll have to compare IQ tests," Trump told Forbes in a sweeping, bizarre interview. "And I can tell you who is going to win."

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But who would actually come out on top in a no-holds-barred, mano-y-mano battle to see who's smarter? Yes, Trump went the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, an institution he's repeatedly stressed is reserved for only the brightest minds in business and made him "like, a really smart person." But he's still managed to develop a reputation for littering his tweets with typos, implied that Frederick Douglass was still alive, and seems to struggle with the mechanics of a pickup truck.

As CEO of Exxon, Tillerson ran a multi-billion dollar, multi-national empire requiring him to forge massive deals across the globe and digest tons of foreign policy by the minute, as the Washington Post points out. According to Steve Coll, dean of Columbia's School of Journalism—who wrote extensively about Exxon—the man is pretty damn bright.

"He's smart. He's thoughtful. He's comfortable in his own skin," Coll told the Post. "He's a good communicator. He can take a lot of questions and bat them around. He's used to being in front of audiences. He's used to answering questions."

IQ scores aside, it's looking like Tillerson's days in the White House could be numbered. The "moron" comment notwithstanding, Tillerson and Trump have reportedly been butting heads for a while, and the secretary of state reportedly threatened to quit back in July, though he denied doing so in a recent press conference.

Tillerson may be bright, but as secretary of state he "has no help. No team, no natural allies, and he's not hiring anyone," a former senior official told the Washington Post. "There's a kind of death spiral."

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