Tillerson's Days Seen As Numbered As Foreign Crises Boil.
CABRERA: The calm before the storm, that was the ominous cryptic warning from President Trump last night speaking off the cuff at a photo op with the nation's highest ranking military officials and their spouses. Listen closely to what he says.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You guys know what this represents? (Inaudible) Maybe it's the calm before the storm.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the storm?</s>PRESIDENT TRUMP: Could be the calm before the storm.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What storm, Mr. President?</s>PRESIDENT TRUMP: You'll find out.</s>CABRERA: You'll find out. I want to bring in CNN White House reporter, Kaitlan Collins, and CNN global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott. So, Kaitlan, did the White House offer anything to clarify what the president meant by those remarks?</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: No, they haven't. They haven't responded to multiple requests for comment about what the president meant when he made that ominous remark last night, but I should note that this is an event that reporters were not supposed to attend. The White House had issued a lid which means that the president is not scheduled to make any more public remarks and then shortly thereafter they called the reporters back into the room and that's when the president unprompted made these remarks about the calm before the storm. He was asked in the moment what storm was he referring to and he did not provide any more context, only said that you'll find out. But the White House did provide a read out of his meeting with these senior military leaders and it said they discussed things like North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, some actual storms as hurricanes that have hit the United States in recent weeks, but no mention of any impending storms that could happen. There's a high possibility here that the president was just speaking off the cuff. We'll see is a favorite phrase of his that he uses very often. So, whether or not he was foreshadowing or just speaking off the cuff again is really anyone's guess at this point -- Ana.</s>CABRERA: We know this president likes to create drama, that is his wheelhouse over the years. Elise, you and Kaitlan, both have some new reporting just out on the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson now widely seen by both officials inside the White House and within the diplomatic community as being on the way out?</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, I mean, look this week with revelations of things he might have said about President Trump, possibly calling him a moron, just the idea that the secretary of state is not in, you know, supporting his president, I think has really chafed President Trump. You know, he kind of knew about this when it -- before these stories started by NBC News that others have, you know, corroborated, ran, but the whole idea that it would become public and that -- Secretary Tillerson would be seen as being defiant of his president in that way, I think President Trump has been fuming. He was certainly furious when this all came out, and now officials are, you know, talking about whether Secretary Tillerson could stay in his job, whether President Trump would want to keep him in his job. I think there's a real recognition in the White House that they can't have this continued turnover of staff. You've seen a chief of staff, national security adviser, several communications advisers and cabinet member leave. So, I think the question is, whether President Trump can, you know, continue to work with this secretary of state. You have threats from North Korea and Iran. You have a big trip by President Trump to Asia coming up. But then on Secretary Tillerson's side, I think it remains to be seen how long he can stand this type of humiliation and this public airing. You heard him earlier this week say I'm not from Washington, I really don't understand this idea that people are trying to take people down. The question is, can he stay with dignity? Does he feel he has a duty to this country and will he stay in this job as long as he can? I think these are the questions that the administration and Secretary Tillerson himself are going through.</s>CABRERA: And the rest of the country curious to see what happens with the end of all of this. Elise Labott and Kaitlan Collins, thank you both. For more perspective, let's bring in National Security Analyst John Kirby, a retired rear admiral and former Pentagon and State Department spokesperson. So, first, Admiral, I would like to get your reaction to this new reporting from Elise and Kaitlan that Tillerson is widely seen as on his way out? REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY</s>CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: Yes. Very, very interesting. And if it's true boy, you can see that ball must have rolled really fast this week in light of the moron comments because before that, while it was widely known that Tillerson had had some frustrations working with the White House, it was largely over policy resourcing issues. And that they were working it out at the staff level and sort of the typical grumbling, but now it seems like things might have been moving fast here after the comments that he allegedly made to military leaders at the Pentagon about the president's intelligence. This is not a president who suffers fools very well. It's not a president who likes to suffer criticism, particularly from those on his team. So, one can see where this might have caused more tension than probably we appreciated earlier on.</s>CABRERA: Yes. The comment being that the president is a moron is the reporting that NBC News broke earlier this week. But we haven't seen the president attack Tillerson, which is interesting because he hasn't held back in terms of his fury projecting that on other officials like AG Jeff Sessions. But if this is how many in the diplomatic community view Tillerson he's on his way out, how does that impact his work on so many of these crucial international issues like North Korea, like the Iran deal, and others?</s>KIRBY: It's certainly not going to help his credibility on the world stage to be seen as having, you know, caused perhaps irreparable rift with the president of the United States. That said, Ana, the president has undermined him in tweets before. I mean, just recently with the, you know, hey, that's OK, Rex, don't negotiate with North Korea. We'll take care of it another way.</s>CABRERA: Calling it a waste of time.</s>KIRBY: Yes. Well, I think the president may have thought he was trying to help Tillerson in terms of pressurize the atmosphere for talks with North Korea with a message it likely sends to Pyongyang is, Tillerson's not really the man, he's not really the one we need to be negotiating with. So, I don't think the president has done much to help him. I also think quite frankly, Ana, that Mr. Tillerson hasn't done a lot to help himself inside the State Department. I mean, there are still plenty of dozens of positions that are left unfilled and he hasn't done a really good job in terms of communicating inside the lifelines with our ambassadors, with our diplomats, the career foreign service officers about what his vision and goal --