President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Thomson Reuters White House reporters were summoned for an impromptu photo session between President Donald Trump and senior military officials at the White House on Thursday night, when suddenly "things got weird," one White House reporter recounted on Twitter.

"You guys know what this represents," Trump asked the press as he pointed around the room, another journalist wrote of the event.

"Tell us," one reporter said.

"Maybe it's the calm before the storm," Trump replied.

"What's the storm?" another reporter asked. "On Iran? On ISIS? On what?"

Trump then praised the military, saying, "We have the world's great military people in this room," before concluding the photo session.

Before Trump left, however, another reporter asked, "What storm, Mr. President?"

"You'll find out," Trump replied.

On Wednesday morning, NBC News reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson nearly resigned over the summer and had once called Trump a "moron." The report prompted Tillerson to hold a press conference in which he denied having considered resigning from his post but did not directly deny calling Trump the name.

"I'm not gonna deal with petty stuff like that," Tillerson said of the name-calling. "There's never been a consideration in my mind to leave." Trump has denied reports of friction with his top diplomat, though he has publicly contradicted him on some issues.

Also on Wednesday, news emerged of a deadly ambush that killed three US Special Forces troops and wounded two others in Niger. A handful of Special Forces soldiers were reportedly conducting a joint US-Nigerien patrol when they were attacked by what a source told CNN were as many as 50 combatants believed to affiliated with the Islamic State terrorist group.

Watch a clip of Trump's comments here: