Trump fired Pentagon chief for “looking like a Democrat”
Donald Trump said that Secretary of Defense James Mattis will leave his post at the end of February, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Trump announced the change of head of the Pentagon on his Twitter.
“General Jim Mattis is retiring after two years as Secretary of Defense,” the president said.
The head of state thanked Mattis for his contribution to the development of new weapons and the fulfillment of allied obligations towards other countries.
Trump promised that he would name Mattis' successor soon.
According to Reuters, Mattis himself wrote a resignation letter to the president. In his letter, he expressed the hope that the president would appoint a person with whom he would have more similar views as head of the Pentagon. At the same time, the minister wished Trump that in the future the United States would take a clear position regarding Russia and China.
The agency points out that rumors about Mattis's resignation have been circulating in Washington since October, when Trump, in an interview with CBS, called the head of the Pentagon “like a Democrat.”
Disagreements between the president and the minister were also related to Syria. Trump announced the day before the withdrawal of American troops from this country, while Mattis has insisted in recent months that the United States must continue to fulfill its tasks of assisting allied Kurdish forces.
During his two years in office, Trump fired more government ministers than any of his five predecessors. One of the most high-profile was the resignation of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to whom the president announced his decision via Twitter. One of the reasons for this was the disagreement between the two politicians regarding dialogue with the DPRK.
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