Pentagon chief Mattis quits, citing policy differences with Trump

[TygrBright]

Source: Reuters

Mattis said in his resignation letter that he was stepping down so Trump could have a defense chief whose views align more closely with his own.

Trump said he would nominate a successor to Mattis shortly.

Mattis joins a long list of former Trump administration senior figures who have either quit or been removed, some unceremoniously like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who Trump fired via Twitter in March.

Trump’s White House has had the highest turnover of senior-level staff of the past five presidents, according to the Brookings Institution think tank.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-mattis/pentagon-chief-mattis-quits-citing-policy-differences-with-trump-idUSKCN1OJ2WR

---

"Retiring".... uh-huh.

Andrew Beatty just tweeted this:

Link to tweet

"Markets are crashing, Trump aides are getting jailed, there are N squared criminal investigations, China is asserting itself, Russia is asserting itself, he's lost a CoS and + SecDef + is making massive decisions on the fly -- Either Trump breaks or America breaks."

And that's where we are today.

Merry Christmas or whatever.

trepidatiously,
Bright

[machoneman]

1. Yeah! Merry Fuckin' Christmas is right.

Everything is fallin' apart!

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Thanks for that Tweet quote.

We do seem to be approaching the eruption of something stage.

And I imagine the Russians are already at work to start riots.

[rockfordfile]

3. Cry me a river

[WhoWoodaKnew]

4. His resignation letter was pretty obvious. You can tell he thinks Trump is a nutjob.

[nitpicker]

21. The Guardian's link to the resignation letter

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/21/jim-mattis-resigns-as-defense-secretary-letter-in-full

[Dorn]

5. 1) Mad Dog Mattis should NEVER have been confirmed 2) The enemy of my enemy is ... my friend?

The Democrats who voted to confirm him were very wrong, and now that he's gone I am not sure how to feel about General Mad Dog.

[sarge43]

13. Say what you will about Mad Dog

Unlike so many of mouth breathers Moron has put in place, at least MD has a working knowledge of how his department is organized and functions. I'm afraid we may regret his leaving.

[rlexx]

6. The meltdown of the shit-show in the dumpster fire is accelerating...

[Ligyron]

7. 25th Amendment Repugs

Immediately.

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. My instincts tell me that Individual 1 will be gone....

by the time Mattis leaves. I can't imagine Mattis resigning and leave that psychopath in charge without any supervision. If trump continues on unimpeded then we are truly fucked.

[Chemisse]

10. Clearly supervision is ineffective.

He must figure, what's the point of being there if he is simply ignored? Plus he must be incredibly pissed.

[sarge43]

14. Syria had to be the last straw n/t

[watoos]

18. Barbara Starr reports that Trump will withdraw troops

in Iraq and Afghanistan also.

Going to be a fun day tomorrow on Wall Street.

[sarge43]

19. Can South Korea be next?

Jaybus, what a shit storm.

[jcgoldie]

15. I suspect he was fired

And Mr. "You're fired" once again is too much of a wuss to even say it.

[watoos]

17. Barbara Starr is reporting that Mattis disagreed

with Trump about leaving the Kurds in Syria to be slaughtered. They fought with us to defeat ISIS.

Mattis is also upset with our withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan which will result in our allies there being slaughtered.

[majdrfrtim]

9. Beatty's assessment

is terrifyingly spot-on, unfortunately.

[onetexan]

22. soon as i heard Mattis was resigning yesterday i felt that dread again

what next in the coming days - how much more damage will this putin puppet do to our nation before he's dragged kicking and screaming out of office and into jail. Can't wait till the Dems take control of the House in a couple weeks.

[ananda]

11. America is breaking.

I've never seen anything like it!

[Hortensis]

12. And let's remember holocaust in Yemen and more

to come in Turkey and Syria. Erdogan has promised to bury the Kurds in trenches. And that's just the beginning. Thousands of children are imprisoned in our deserts, we're breaking our compacts with naturalized citizens in an American ethnic cleansing, and our white nationalists are moving ahead with facilities to imprison many tens of thousands, perhaps eventually hundreds of thousands.

We have 3 grandsons coming up to their teens. Future military drafts are more likely than before.

[watoos]

16. The headline is a lie, it should be taken down.

Mattis doesn't quit. He refused an order from his CIC and so he resigned.

I expect that Trump will replace Mattis with Steven Segal.

Mattis is not a quitter.

[spike jones]

20. My guess for his replacemnet is Erik Prince.

Prince wants to kill 2 billion Muslins.

[yellowcanine]

23. Rats, sinking ship, etc.....

It is a very old story.