Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s contempt for his former boss Donald Trump is revealed in a new book.
According to an excerpt from ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos’ upcoming television program “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis,” Mattis tried to stay as far away from the White House as possible during his time in the Trump administration.
“Any reasonable person – someone like Mattis or (Trump’s former Secretary of State Rex) Tillerson – was immediately shunned by Trump and stayed away from him,” Stephanopoulos quoted former Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert as saying.
“I mean, you couldn’t have put Mattis in the White House,” Bossert added, according to the book. “His view was, ‘This is a madman screaming in a round room. And the less time I spend there, the more time I can just go about my business.'”
The Guardian published an excerpt from the book last week.
Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, served in the Trump administration from 2017 to late 2018. He resigned after disagreeing with Trump’s decision to withdraw all American forces from Syria.
In 2020, Mattis broke his silence and ripped his former boss in an open letter to The Atlantic, saying Trump was “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – and does not even pretend to try.”
“Instead, he is trying to divide us,” he continued. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
