Tillerson: Netanyahu would provide Trump with ‘misinformation’

US President Donald Trump’s first secretary of state Rex Tillerson calls Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a bit Machiavellian” and laments that he had tried to persuade Washington using “misinformation.”

Speaking on a panel at Harvard University Tillerson calls Netanyahu “an extraordinarily skilled” politician and diplomat, albeit “a bit Machiavellian,” the Harvard Gazette reports him as saying.

“In dealing with Bibi, it’s always useful to carry a healthy amount of skepticism in your discussions with him,” Tillerson recounts adding that Israeli government would share “misinformation” in an effort to convince Trump that something was necessary.

“They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.’ We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” says Tillerson. “It bothers me that an ally that’s that close and important to us would do that to us.”