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The Senate Armed Services chair vowed to help move Mattis through the upper chamber's confirmation process. McCain, who will chair Mattis's confirmation hearing, told the Washington Examiner that he would write the bill to grant Mattis a waiver of the seven-year rule. Not all lawmakers agreed on that Thursday night. Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a former Hillary Clinton supporter, said she is against changing that rule in order to accommodate Mattis. "While I respect Gen Mattis's service, I oppose a waiver-civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy," Gillibrand tweeted.

Donald Trump has picked an honorable, thoughtful, and courageous warrior to lead the Pentagon. He knows how to lead men in battle. He’s an outstanding strategic thinker, and he’s unencumbered by politically correct nonsense. Trump’s cabinet is shaping up very well indeed, but this choice is his best and most crucial personnel decision yet. No one can doubt General Mattis’s credentials. The Washington Post has a nice summary: Mattis, whose nicknames include “Mad Dog” and the “Warrior Monk,” has had a leading hand in some of the U.S. military’s most significant operations in the last 20 years. As a one-star...

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, according to people familiar with the decision, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform. To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law stating that defense secretaries must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception

Trump just officially announced Gen. James Mathis for SECDEF at his "Thank You" rally in Cincinnati! !!

The Washington Post first broke the news today from “sources within the Trump transition team” that President-elect Trump had selected General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as his Secretary of Defense. After every major media outlet in the country, including this one, reported it, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, wrote on Twitter that “no decision has been made yet with regard to Secretary of Defense.” According to CNN, the official announcement is expected early next week. Following the mass media confusion, Jason Miller told The Washington Examiner: “My sources are better than their sources. Trust me on that one.” According to...

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform, according to people familiar with the decision.

(General Mattis is being considered to be the Secretary of Defense. What a great way to start rebuilding our military. His nickname is Mad Dog Mattis) Story from Dr. Pierce: "A couple of months ago, when I told General Krulak, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, now the chair of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, that we were having General Mattis speak this evening, he said, Let me tell you a Jim Mattis story. General Krulak said, when he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, he and his wife would...

Among those in the Marine Corps I taught and deployed with, Gen. (ret.) Jim Mattis is a legend. The quotes, the foxholes, the knife hands. Everyone has their favorite story. I once handed Mattis a Diet Coke out of a cooler at Quantico. A mundane act? Yes. But I’ve remembered it fondly for 12 years. He is Chaos, Mad Dog, and the warrior monk. But we should not add secretary of defense to that list. I have long thought of Mattis as a “break glass in case of emergency” type of leader. He was uniquely suited to his roles in...

Just before Marine Gen. James 'Mad Dog' Mattis was getting ready to deploy with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to Iraq in early 2004, one of his colleagues asked him about the importance of reading for military officers who sometimes found themselves "too busy to read." The legendary general sometimes referred to as "The Warrior Monk" carted around a personal library of 6,000 books with him everywhere, and he had plenty to say on the topic. His response went viral over email... Here's what he wrote, on Nov. 20, 2003: ... The problem with being too busy to read is...

Retired US Marine Corps General James Mattis recently said that America pays a price for its perceived bias in support of Israel. “I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians,” he said Saturday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado in response to a question about the peace process Mattis took over Central...

President-elect Donald Trump sent this tweet early this morning about General James “Mad Dog” Mattis… "General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016 Could be because Ret. 4-Star Army Gen. Jack Keane was asked to serve as SecDef, but turned the gig down. From NPR: President-elect Donald Trump asked him to serve as secretary of defense, retired four-star Army Gen. Jack Keane tells NPR’s Rachel Martin — but Keane declined the offer, citing personal reasons. Keane says he recommended...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he is considering retired General James Mattis for U.S. defense secretary, a day after meeting with him in New Jersey.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is picking up the pace with his cabinet and top White House staff choices, and despite the fervent wishes of some Democrats that views expressed during the campaign would be moderated after the election, the new administration’s team is maintaining a decidedly conservative bent. Up next, secretary of defense? A retired Marine for defense secretary? James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, will meet the president-elect at Mr. Trump’s New Jersey country club on Saturday to discuss the post of defense secretary, according to two people close to the transition team.Conservatives this spring had...

Mattis wanted to send a third aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf earlier this year, The Daily Beast has exclusively learned, in what would have been a massive show of force at a time when Iranian military commanders were publicly threatening to sink American ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The four-star Marine Corps general and CentCom commander believed the display could have deterred Iran from further escalating tensions, according to U.S. military officials familiar with his thinking. But the president wanted to focus military resources on new priorities like China, and Mattis was told a third carrier group was...

A former brigadier general revealed on Fox News Monday some new information about the White House's role in U.S. Central Command's skewing of intelligence to downplay the threats of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Last week, a House Republican task force concluded in a 15-page report that U.S. military leaders altered intelligence reports "to paint a rosier picture" of the U.S.-led fight against ISIS than intelligence analysts believed was warranted. The report blamed “structural and management changes” at the intelligence directorate for the distortions, but stopped short of explaining WHY the changes were made. According to Defense News, "the problems followed...

An anonymous group of conservative billionaires is ready to place their bets on a man dubbed “Mad Dog,” hoping to draft him into the presidential race to confront Donald Trump. Think of it as a Plan B should Trump be nominated by the Republican Party in Cleveland: swing behind retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and press him into service yet again as a third-party candidate. Mattis is the former commander of Central Command, which includes the strife-afflicted conflict zones of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and has developed a reputation among troops as a general...

BILL KRISTOL: The only thing that appeals to me is what Reince Priebus just called a dumb idea, which is giving the American people a better choice than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump... I think an independent candidacy is totally doable, I think it will happen. The ballot access problems are not -- STEPHANOPOULOS: -- coming up on the filing deadlines -- KRISTOL: -- oh, Texas, North Carolina. Every other state -- no other state's filing deadlines' before June 27th. You couldn't wait until the convention. You'd have to decide after Indiana, possibly after California. I think there will be...

A group of wealthy donors is preparing to draft retired Marine Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis to run for president and take down Donald Trump, according to reports. Nearly a dozen donors are willing to throw their resources behind the former head of U.S. Central Command. The group has delivered six memos to Mattis outlining how he could win the race in the hope that it will encourage him to run, the Daily Beast reported. The game plan would be for Mattis to win enough states to keep Trump and Hillary Clinton from getting the 270 electoral votes needed to...

As the inevitability of a Donald Trump nomination grows, many Republicans are moving to the acceptance stage of grief. Trump’s unfavorability ratings are historic for a presumptive nominee. Some reputable polls have him as high as 60 percent negative, many others have him losing by double digits to Hillary Clinton. Retention of the Senate, already an uphill climb in an election year swelling with vulnerable Republican incumbents, is an equally dim prospect. Not all conservatives have given up the ship. The presumptive Democratic nominee is a hair away from federal indictment. The presumptive Republican nominee is a reality-TV lunatic who...

President Obama plans to overhaul the Joint Chiefs of Staff this year as he seeks to replace a handful of longtime members whose terms are coming to a close. Obama on Tuesday nominated Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, commandant of the Marine Corps, to succeed Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as chairman this fall. He also tapped Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, head of U.S. Transportation Command, to replace Navy Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld as vice chairman. In the roles since 2011, Dempsey and Winnefeld are expected to retire after their current two-year terms end in October and August, respectively. What’s more,...