As Mattis’s words sink in, Trump orders him out
U.S. defence secretary replaced after delivering harsh rebuke to president
WASHINGTON— Less than two hours after U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis went to the White House on Thursday to hand a resignation letter to President Donald Trump, the president stood in the Oval Office and dictated a glowing tweet announcing that Mattis was retiring “with distinction” at the end of February.
But Trump had not read the letter. As became apparent to the president only after days of news coverage, a senior administration official said, Mattis had issued a stinging rebuke of Trump over his neglect of allies and tolerance of authoritarians. The president grew increasingly angry as he watched a parade of defence analysts go on televi- sion to extol Mattis’s bravery, another aide said, until he decided Sunday that he had had enough.
In a tweet later that morning, the president announced he was removing Mattis from his post by Jan. 1, two months before the defence secretary had planned to depart. Trump said that Patrick Shanahan, Mattis’s deputy and a former Boeing executive, would serve as the acting defence secretary, praising him as “very talented” and adding that “he will be great!”
Trump’s sudden announcement that he was firing a man who had already quit was the exclamation point to a tumultuous week at the Pentagon, where officials have been reeling from day after day of presidential tweets announcing changes in U.S. military policy.
Mattis had wanted to stay through a NATO defence ministers meeting scheduled for February, hoping to enshrine recent moves by the alliance to bulk up its security compact as a bulwark against Russia. But Mattis’s resignation letter did him no favours on that count: It had become hard to envision how he could continue for two months to represent a president whose own views toward Russia are far more benign.
As it became clear that the two men’s ideas of how to treat both friends and adversaries were so publicly at odds, the White House decided that there would be no reason for Mattis to stay on during what two officials called his “lame duck” period.
Officials in allied nations, who had already expressed unease over Mattis’s resignation, voiced exasperation over his hastened departure. “And now Trump gets rid of SecDef Mattis almost immediately,” Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden, wrote on Twitter. “No smooth transition. No effort at reassurance to allies. Just vindictive.”
Even as he accelerated Mattis’s exit, Trump seemed to suggest a slower one for the 2,000 troops in Syria — a drawdown he announced last week over Mattis’s objection. On Twitter, Trump said that he had spoken with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that morning to discuss “the slow and highly co-ordinated pullout of U.S. troops from the area.”
Just days ago, Trump declared victory over the Daesh group and said that troops would be pulled out immediately. “They’re all coming back,” Trump said in a video broadcast Wednesday, “and they’re coming back now.”
On Sunday, a senior administration official would not say what that ultimately meant for the timetable of troops in Syria, but said the president had reiterated to Erdogan that the United States would remain there long enough to ensure an orderly handover.