Jim Mattis, the onetime secretary of defense for the Trump administration has described the former president as “a madman in a circular room screaming,” a new book reveals via Independent.
It has been noted that the revelation was made by Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser from 2017 to 2018, and published in The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis.
The new book, from journalists George Stephanopolous and Lisa Dickey, discusses the history of presidential crises since John F Kennedy and is set to be published next week.
Mr Bossert has told the authors that Trump avoided situation room briefings as he didn’t like having to go to the room — and believed the generals should come to him, instead, according to a review by The Guardian.
“I mean, you couldn’t get Mattis into the White House,” Mr Bossert said.
Mattis has spent 43 years in the Marine Corps, and rose to commander at US Central Command before retiring in 2013 as a four-star general. He went on to join the Trump administration as defense secretary in 2017. However, he lasted only a year, resigning over the president’s decision to remove US forces from Syria.
According toThe Atlantic he told Mr Trump: “You’re going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to ISIS. I’m not going to do it.”
In 2020, Mr Mattis also penned a letter to The Atlantic denouncing Mr Trump’s presidency.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try,” Mr Mattis wrote.
“Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
