Retired Gen. Mattis calls on Congress to investigate Trump’s ‘reckless actions’
Richland’s retired four-star general and former secretary of defense has broken his recent silence on President Trump.
On Thursday Gen. Jim Mattis, Trump’s defense secretary from 2017 to the start of 2019, joined other former secretaries of defense to call on Congress to hold immediate hearings to assess the national security implications of Trump’s recent dismissal of several senior U.S. military leaders.
“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power,” said the letter signed by Mattis and four other defense secretaries.
Mattis was the only one of the five to serve under a Republican president. The former defense secretaries said they could only conclude — like many Americans, including troops — that military leaders were being fired for purely partisan reasons.
Trump has offered no justification for the dismissals, which include the chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs, the chief of naval operations, the vice chief of the Air Force and judge advocates general for the military service, the letter said.
The House and Senate should demand that the Trump administration justify each firing and fully explain why Congress’ legislative intent that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff complete a four-year term in office was violated, the letter said. Air Force General C.Q. Brown had been chairman of the joint chiefs for less than two years.
As senators wait for an explanation, they should refuse to confirm any new defense department nominations, including that of retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Raizin” Caine as the next chairman of the joint chiefs, the secretaries of defense said. Trump’s actions are undermining the United States’ all volunteer military force and weakening national security, the letter said.
“Talented Americans may be far less likely to choose a life of military service if they believe they will be held to a political standard,” the letter said. “Those currently serving may grow cautious of speaking truth to power or they could erode good order and discipline by taking political actions in uniform.”
The secretaries of defense said they are not asking Congress members for a favor, but to do their jobs.
Mattis quiet during Trump campaign
Mattis refrained from making direct comments about the presidential candidates during the last election. He said on “Meet the Press” in 2019 that the nation doesn’t need military generals getting involved in politics.
However, Bob Woodward said in a podcast of ”The Bulwark” that Mattis had sent him an email praising his new book “War” in fall 2024. Woodward took the email as an endorsement of warnings about Trump in the book and the “process of trying to explicitly say, ‘Let’s make sure we don’t try to downplay the threat, because the threat is high.’”
Woodward reported that when Mattis was Trump’s defense secretary, he was so worried that Trump would order a nuclear strike against North Korea that he would sleep in gym clothes in case he received a nighttime call to go to the White House, according to the Harris campaign.
Mattis resigned as defense secretary in December 2018 in protest of Trump’s policy in Syria, and then was critical of Trump in the next few years.
In 2020 Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, condemned Trump in a story published by The Atlantic. The news magazine called what Mattis wrote “an extraordinary condemnation” of his former boss and his actions following the nationwide demonstrations over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the president’s threats to call in national troops.
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
Mattis said the protests were “defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.” “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” he wrote. In 2021 Mattis blamed Trump for the violence at the U.S. Capitol.
Mattis said then that Trump had used the presidency “to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens,” according to The Associated Press.
Mattis’ Richland WA roots
Mattis grew up in Richland, Wash., where his father worked at the Hanford site, and he served on the board of the Tri-Cities Food Bank after retiring from the military as a four-star general and before being confirmed as secretary of defense in 2017.
He calls Richland his home and in 2022 he married Christina Lomasney, a physicist and chief commercialization officer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.
Other defense secretaries signing the letter included William Perry, who served under Clinton; Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, who both served under Obama; and Lloyd Austin III, who served under Biden.
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald