US President Donald Trump has said he has "total confidence" in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson following a report that the top diplomat had referred to the President as a "moron."
"It was fake news. It was a totally phoney story," Mr Trump told reporters, referring to an NBC News report that quoted senior administration officials as saying Mr Tillerson had called Mr Trump a "moron" last summer during a meeting at the Pentagon.
"Total confidence in Rex. I have total confidence," said Mr Trump, hours after Mr Tillerson denied that he had considered quitting this summer.
He said he was as committed to President Trump's agenda as he was when he first took on the role.
"I have never considered leaving this post," Mr Tillerson said at the State Department.
"I am here for as long as the president feels I can be useful to achieving his objectives."
"My commitment to the success of our president and our country is as strong as it was the day I accepted his offer to serve as secretary of state," Mr Tillerson said.
Mr Tillerson spoke after NBC News reported that Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials intervened to persuade him not to resign during the summer as tensions rose between Mr Trump and Mr Tillerson.
The Secretary of State also dismissed the report that he had called the president a "moron" as "petty nonsense".
Mr Trump appeared to undercut Mr Tillerson over the weekend when the president tweeted that he told him that he was "wasting his time" trying to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.
I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
Mr Pence, in a statement, said he never discussed the prospect of the Secretary of State resigning.
"The vice president can also confirm that, as the Secretary of State made clear, at no time did he and the secretary ever discuss the prospect of the secretary's resignation from the administration," Mr Pence's office said in the statement posted on Twitter by NBC News.
Mr Tillerson's tenure has been dogged with rumors about his unhappiness with Mr Trump's policies, but the Secretary of State offered a vigorous defence of both the US president and his foreign policy goals.
"President Trump's foreign policy goals break the mould of what people traditionally think is achievable on behalf of our country. We're finding new ways to govern that deliver new victories", Mr Tillerson said.
Shortly before Mr Tillerson spoke, Mr Trump hit out at the reports on social media.
NBC news is #FakeNews and more dishonest than even CNN. They are a disgrace to good reporting. No wonder their news ratings are way down!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2017
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has played down any tensions between Mr Trump and Mr Tillerson over their apparent split, most recently over North Korea.
