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(snip) Waltz then dropped this bomb. Rep. Waltz said that General Mattis was Secretary of Defense at the time and decided not to inform President Trump because the Pentagon thought Trump was “too provocative and aggressive!” (snip)

The U.S. is experiencing an "exceptionally challenging" environment for the relationship between military and civilian parts of society, a large group of former Pentagon leaders warned in an open letter published Tuesday. Why it matters: The letter, which cited political polarization and other social changes, was signed by eight former defense secretaries and five former Joint Chiefs chairmen from both Republican and Democratic administrations. Among the signatories were two of former President Trump's defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark Esper.

Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney is refusing to back down in her feud with Donald Trump. According to a report, Cheney “secretly orchestrated” an op-ed in the Washington Post from all living former secretaries of defense slamming Trump’s handling of the military in January, according to the New Yorker. A good friend of Cheney's, Eric Edelman, reportedly told the New Yorker that Cheney had personally met with all 10 living former defense secretaries, including Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, urging them to participate in the op-ed.

Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney “secretly orchestrated” an op-ed in the Washington Post from all living former secretaries of defense slamming former President Trump’s handling of the military in January, according to the New Yorker. Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney’s, reportedly told the New Yorker that Cheney had personally met with all 10 living former defense secretaries, including Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, urging them to participate in the op-ed. The report comes as Cheney is facing an onslaught of criticism from pro-Trump factions in the Republican Party who want to see her removed from the GOP leadership...

Joe Biden is overcompensating again. On Monday, he repealed Trump’s so-called transgender military ban, scoring points with LGBT activists. Before we get into that, how about a quick pop quiz? Under whose leadership did the Department of Defense base its “report and recommendations on military service by transgender persons” on the “bedrock principle” that “any eligible individual who can meet the high standards for military service without special accommodations should be permitted to serve,” adding that “this is no less true for transgender persons than for any other eligible individual”? Answer: Secretary Jim Mattis, under President Trump. Who said in...

Why U.S. Security Depends on Alliances—Now More Than Ever. By Kori Schake, Jim Mattis, Jim Ellis, and Joe Felter

Editor's Note: This column is co-authored by Jim McCoy. John Boulton’s new exposé on President Trump, the 558 page “Room Where it Happened,” is the second hit job in two weeks, along with Ret. General Jim Mattis’s editorial in the above reproach bastion of free speech, New York Times. There is a third literary revelation scheduled to be published later this summer by Mary L. Trump, and one by Putzlizer Prize winning journalist [SIC] Mary Jordan, ”The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.” Obviously, the knives are now out and it’s time to slice up Trump...

President Trump tweeted a copy of a letter from John Dowd, one of the lead lawyers who represented him during the Russia investigation, addressed to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The letter penned by Dowd denounced Mattis for criticizing the president’s approach to protesters in front of the White House. “The peaceful protesters near Lafayette park were not peaceful and are not real. They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy,” Dowd wrote, referring to the peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square who were forcefully dispersed. After the protestors fled from the square, Trump walked through the...

Bill Kristol Tweet: "If John Kelly spoke privately with the ten Republican senators he knows best, and Jim Mattis spoke with the ten senators he’s closest to, and if each told the senators how much he fears for the country with Trump, untrammeled and unhinged, at the helm...Trump would be gone."

Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has a book coming out this summer, but he warns that it will not be a "tell-all" about President Donald Trump. "Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead" will be published on July 16, Random House announced Tuesday. Co-written with Bing West, the book will be an "expansive account" of the retired general's military career, according to the publisher. Mattis will write about conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq and use those experiences for lessons on war and peace. The book was under contract before Mattis became defense secretary in early 2017, although it will touch...

U.S. President Donald Trump reshaped U.S. policy in the Middle East by handing Ankara the job of finishing off Islamic State, in Syria in a move that poses both a risk/opportunity for Turkey, Israeli Haaretz newspaper wrote. Trump was expected to warn the Turkish president over his plan to launch a third crossborder attack targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, namely the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeast Syria, during a phone call 2-weeks ago. However, something unexpected happened, Haaretz said.Trump is reported to have asked if Ankara can ‘’clean up ISIS?’’ if the U.S. withdraws, with Turkey’s strongman responding  Turkish forces were...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Sunday that "I feel pretty good about where we're headed" in Syria after suggesting that President Trump is "reconsidering" the planned pullout which had drawn bipartisan criticism and forced the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. Graham emerged from the White House after a two-hour lunch with Trump and said the president "told me some things I didn't know that make me feel a lot better about where we're headed in Syria." "He promised to destroy ISIS. He's going to keep that promise," Graham said of Trump. "We're not there yet. But as I...

The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years. Mattis, an active duty general in the Marine Corps who reportedly occasionally reads books, received a lot of good press during his time at Defense, sometimes being referred to as “the only adult in the room” when President Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy team was meeting. Conveniently forgotten are Mattis comments relating to how to “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill...

A narrow majority of U.S. voters support President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and reduce the country's military presence in Afghanistan, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they back the moves in Syria and Afghanistan, which came as a surprise to the president's own national security advisers when it was announced last week. By contrast, 48 percent said they oppose the troop withdrawals and reductions, the poll found. Trump announced he would completely remove the approximately 2,000 troops in Syria battling ISIS, while he said he...

President Trump spoke with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday. They discussed the fight against ISIS, the issue of Syria including coordination of the US military withdrawal from the Syria and expanded trade with Turkey that has been on hold in recent years as relations were strained...... Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Turkish president Erdogan an "anti-Semitic dictator" on Sunday saying among other things about Erdogan...... Israel's Education Minister and leader of the Jewish Home party Naftali Bennett says President Trump's Middle East peace plan includes a Palestinian state in the West Bank...... President Trump has...

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Defense Secretary James Mattis will depart the Pentagon by January 1, a date earlier than anticipated, and will appoint Patrick Shanahan as acting Secretary. The president’s announcement, made via Twitter, comes days after Mattis stunned Washington by announcing his resignation, prompted by what the former marine said were policy differences with Trump. Shanahan is the Pentagon’s number 2 official.

MANY PEOPLE who viewed Donald Trump as unprepared and temperamentally ill-suited to be president initially reassured themselves that a sober-minded Republican majority in Congress would restrain him. Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) pitiable farewell this week spotlighted the emptiness of those hopes. Mr. Ryan allowed the president and his allies to corrupt the House Intelligence Committee and treat federal law enforcement as an enemy. Like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and most other ostensible GOP leaders, Mr. Ryan abetted the president as he sought, fruitlessly, to use fear and bigotry to preserve the House Republican majority in the 2018...

Its all played out like a WWE wrestling show produced by President Trump's close friend Vince McMahon, but the drama over border wall funding is moving towards its climax as we approach Christmas.... General Jim Mattis is leaving as Secretary of Defense.... On to Afghanistan where President Trump has decided to pull out half of the US troops in that country.... This week US Afghanistan representative Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban for two days of talks.... The Justice Department is charging two Chinese men with hacking into computer networks of private companies and government agencies..... Israel's "Haaretz" newspaper reported...

President Trump visited Pittsburgh Tuesday to offer condolences following Saturday's massacre at a synagogue... If the polling data is any indicator and if one assumes its a bit biased towards the Democrats, the Republicans will certainly improve their majority in the US Senate in the mid-term elections with some losses in the House likely. Convicted Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger was found dead in a federal prison in West Virginia beaten "nearly beyond recognition"..... Word today that the United States is pressuring Saudi Arabia to agree to a cease fire in Yemen's civil war... The "Sunday Express" in the...

The leaders of four nations are talking about Syria in Istanbul, Turkey today..... US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a security meeting in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain that Russia is no replacement for the US in the Middle East.... In Germany, voters go to the polls in the state of Hesse tomorrow with anti-mass immigration Alternative for Germany set to make its entry into that state's parliament for the first time.... Turkish President Erdogan has urged the Saudi government to reveal the location of Jamal Khashoggi's body..... The fiance of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is declining a...