Who called the president a moron?

It was a famous World War I catering corps catchcry.

‘‘Who called the cook a bastard?’’ The retort from the ranks was (all together now!): ‘‘Who called the bastard a cook?’’

Now we have a variation on that theme that works just as well. Who called the president a moron? Lots of people have, but the reported critic of particular public interest is US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who when pressed, didn’t directly deny having said it.

He did, however, give a contradictory assessment, insisting he considers Donald Trump smart and that reports Tillerson had been on the brink of quitting in July were wrong.

If we take him at his word, we can only conclude he has yet to hit rockbottom.

Working under Trump cannot be good for the self-respect.

Even since Tillerson’s believe-it-ornot July crisis of confidence he has had to distance himself, with barely concealed distaste, from his boss’s assurance there were many fine people in the white nationalists rally in Charlottesville in August.

And he’s endured Trump’s condescending scold that Tillerson was just ‘‘wasting his time’’ trying to negotiate with Kim Jong Un. Because the only way to deal with bellicose ignorance is with greater bellicose ignorance.

Most recently, Trump, after sensing that tossing paper towels to Puerto Ricans awaiting disaster relief came across as somehow inadequate, asked the one person he trusted – himself – a difficult question.

What could possibly be more welcome than paper towels?

This led him to airily tell media the US would have to wipe out $75 billion debt Puerto Rico owes bondholders all over the world.

Wall Street threw a fit, Puerto Rican bonds nosedived, and the White House had to gabble a reassurance that no, see, they had no such plans really.

Lacking coherence, let alone integrity, Trump’s entire administration gets no respect.

The nation’s satirists, for their part, struggle as best they can with the problem of how do you spoof a man who is already, himself, a grotesque caricature of a leader?

How can you highlight the stupidities and hypocrisies of his leadership when they’re already just so luminous? Maybe by taking a judicial tone.

When White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gravely cautioned in the wake of the Las Vegas shootings that this was not the time to talk about gun control, Stephen Colbert merely reported her words.

And then added a montage of spokesmen eerily using the exact same ‘‘now’s not the time’’ line after previous massacres. Six of them. Stretching back to 2012.