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Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Russia certainly interfered in the 2016 election, prompting his former boss to call him “dumb as a rock.”

The caustic tweet came after a week in which Washington extolled civility as it bade farewell to former President George Bush and his “kinder and gentler” brand of leadership.

At an event in Houston, Tillerson said Trump was undisciplined, did not like to read and did not respect the limits of his office.

Asked if he believed that Russia interfered in the presidential elections, Tillerson replied “there’s no question” and that it was well-documented by intelligence agencies.

“What Russia wants to do is undermine our confidence and undermine the world’s confidence in us,” Tillerson said.

Describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “very calculating” and “very opportunistic” leader, Tillerson said Putin’s strategy is to undermine the U.S. influence around the globe.

“Many people talk about playing chess. He plays three-dimensional chess,” Tillerson said.

When asked about his federal service, Tillerson told the audience that he had never actually met Trump until he was invited by Vice President Mike Pence to a meeting that ended with him being asked to become secretary of state.

The honeymoon didn’t last long, Tillerson said.

The relationship between him and Trump became strained after the president grew tired of the former Exxon Mobil CEO telling him that he could not do things the way he wanted.

Tillerson said the two had starkly different styles and did not share a common value system.

“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 said.

Trump would get very frustrated when they would have those conversations, he said.

“I’d say here’s what we can do,” Tillerson said. “We can go back to Congress and get this law changed. And if that’s what you want to do, there’s nothing wrong with that. I told him I’m ready to go up there and fight the fight, if that’s what you want to do.”

In response to his comments, Trump took to Twitter to denounce Tillerson as “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.”

Trump fired Tillerson with a Twitter post in March.

The acrid exchange demonstrated several truths about Trump’s presidency: He often hires for top positions people he does not know well or, as with Tillerson, had not even previously met, grows disenchanted with them or alienates them and casts them aside.

As a result, some of the most damning portrayals of the president come from people once in his circle.

Perhaps more threatening to him is his own former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has turned on him and implicated him in a hush money scheme to squelch stories of sexual impropriety before the 2016 election and asserted that Trump was seeking to build a tower in Moscow even as he clinched the presidential nomination that year.

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