Trump is reportedly souring on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
Trump is calling him “Moderate Dog” instead of “Mad Dog.”
Things aren’t so peachy anymore between President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, according to recent reports.
Helene Cooper at the New York Times and David Cloud at the Los Angeles Times have both published accounts of the increasingly frayed relationship between the president and the retired Marine general, whom Trump previously revered. The pair have gone from sharing burgers over briefings to distant communications and diverging opinions on matters of national security.
Trump has reportedly stopped calling Mattis “Mad Dog” — a nickname Mattis didn’t like in the first place — and has instead, according to Politico, begun calling him “Moderate Dog” behind closed doors.
The very thing that endeared Mattis to allies, Democrats, and members of the national security establishment — a sense that he checked some of Trump’s more disruptive foreign policy impulses — has become the thing chafing his relationship with the president.
The New York Times reports that Trump has started to worry that Mattis is a Democrat at heart, and White House officials have expressed annoyance at what they see as the defense secretary’s less-than-eager response to the president’s requests. Mattis initially slow-walked Trump’s decision to ban transgender troops from serving in the military and shot down a White House proposal to stop family members from accompanying troops to South Korea.
According to the LA Times, most of the Pentagon was “blindsided” when Trump said he would suspend military exercises with South Korea as a gesture of goodwill to North Korea after meeting with its leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June. Trump and Mattis also reportedly have different takes on the White House’s proposed “space force.” Mattis publicly questioned the need for it; later, after the White House had announced the Pentagon would create the new branch, he said he was just against “rushing” to do so. The pair have also disagreed over NATO policy and Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal.
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Originally Posted by CaptUSA
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