Mattis says there’s no rift
Defense secretary calls speculation that he is at odds with the president ‘ludicrous.’
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary James N. Mattis moved Thursday to knock down speculation that he was at odds with the White House, less than a week after a video of him talking to troops about American values led to widespread speculation that he was criticizing President Trump.
In the impromptu speech to U.S. forces deployed in Jordan, which was surreptitiously recorded on a cellphone, Mattis talked about political divisiveness since the racially inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va.
“Our country right now, it’s got problems that we don’t have in the military,” Mattis said. “You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”
When the video became public, many interpreted the remarks as a slight against Trump’s leadership.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Mattis called that interpretation “ludicrous.” He was reiterating what the president had said about the need for unity, he said.
“If I say ‘six’ and the president says ‘half a dozen,’ they’re going to say I disagreed with him,” Mattis said.
The video, however, was not the only instance in which Mattis appeared to be saying something different from the president.
On Wednesday, Mattis publicly emphasized diplomacy as the path forward in the increasingly tense situation with North Korea.
The statement came just hours after Trump tweeted that “talking is not the answer” to the problems with the defiant communist country.
Pyongyang has fired 21 missiles during 14 tests since February. The latest missile test, which flew over northern Japan on Monday, had triggered Trump’s tweet.
Even though Mattis said the “solutions” to the North Korea problem were probably to be found through diplomatic channels, he emphasized Thursday that he did not disagree with the president.
“There was no contradiction,” he said. “I agree with the president that we should not be talking to a nation that’s firing missiles over the top of Japan, an ally.”
Mattis acknowledged, however, that there were issues on which he and Trump disagreed.
In one example that was widely publicized, Trump reconsidered his calls for resuming the practice of waterboarding of terrorism suspects after talking to Mattis. The president also warmed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance, which he had previously called obsolete, following consultation with Mattis.
“First time I met with President Trump, we disagreed on three things in the first 40 minutes I met with him — on NATO, no torture and something else — and he hired me,” Mattis said. “This is not a man who is immune to being persuaded if he thinks you’ve got an argument.”
Despite the initial disagreements, Mattis agreed to serve as Defense secretary even though that meant coming out of retirement and back into the spotlight.
“When a president of the United States asks you to do something ... I don’t think it’s old-fashioned or anything, I don’t care if it’s a Republican or Democrat, we all have an obligation to serve,” he said Thursday. “That’s all there is to it. And so, you serve.”
Recently, Trump settled on a new military strategy in Afghanistan, largely shaped by Mattis’ advice, after months of debate within his national security team. Trump said in announcing the strategy that his initial instinct had been to pull out.
Ultimately, he was persuaded by Mattis, national security advisor H.R. McMaster, and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to provide U.S. commanders with more troops and broader authority to pursue militants in Afghanistan.
Mattis confirmed that he had signed the first deployment orders to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but would not specify how many.
Trump likes to call Mattis “Mad Dog,” even though Mattis dislikes the moniker, dismissing it as something a “reporter came up with years ago on a slow news day.”