Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that he would eventually ‘tell the real story’ about his ‘terrible’ former Defense secretary after General James Mattis issued scathing criticism of the president’s handling of the George Floyd riots.
‘Mattis was our Country’s most overrated General. He talked a lot, but never ‘brought home the bacon.’ He was terrible!’ Trump tweeted in reupping his attack against Mattis.
‘Someday I will tell the real story on him and others – both good and bad!’ he continued in a tease of a tell-all of his presidency.
The president’s post included a tweet from Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe, who attached an op-ed from conservative news site American Greatness titled: General Mattis Has Betrayed the Marines and America.
The piece was posted on Saturday and penned by Sebastian Gorka, who served for about seven months as a deputy assistant to Trump from January 2017 to August 2017.
Jaffe says he hopes people will read the article and do some ‘soul searching.’
‘I’m not a Marine, but I know the Marines,’ Gorka asserted in the op-ed. ‘Jim Mattis is no Marine.’
The Hungarian-American former Trump official turned fish-oil pitchman argued that he’s qualified to make that assessment about the retired Marine Corps four-star general due to his two years of teaching U.S. military at Marine Corps University in Quantico.
Donald Trump took another hit at his former Defense secretary, claiming General Jim Mattis is ‘terrible’
Trump previewed in the tweet that he will one day ‘tell the real story’ about Mattis – who he claims he fired and dubbed the nickname ‘Mad Dog’
Trump’s reupped attack against Mattis came after the president’s former deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka released an op-ed where he said: ‘I’m not a Marine, but I know the Marines. Jim Mattis is no Marine’
Trump also reposted a clip from Gorka’s radio show where he referred to Mattis, whose less preferred nickname is ‘Mad Dog,’ as a ‘lap dog’ and ’embarrassment to America’
Trump also reposted a tweet from Gorka including a clip from his radio show, America First, where he plays on Mattis’ nickname of ‘Mad Dog’ and calls him a ‘lap dog.’
‘Lap Dog Mattis is an embarrassment to America!’ the president shared in his repost of Gorka.
Gorka maintains that he left the White House because he felt there were those within the administration that were not dedicated to progressing the Make America Great Again doctrine.
The White House disputed Gorka’s claim that he resigned, but confirmed at the time that he was no longer employed or granted access to the White House.
After Gorka’s strenuous exit from the White House, he became a Fox News contributor until he left the network in 2019 following a controversial speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Gorka began hosting Sinclair Broadcasting radio show America First at the beginning of 2019, replacing Michael Medved – and said he left Fox to focus on that.
In September 2019, Gorka became a spokesman for Relief Factor, a fish oil supplement company – appearing in a handful of different commercials that aired on Fox News and pushing the pills.
The attacks from Gorka and Trump against the former Secretary of Defense comes after Mattis issued harsh criticism against the president for using the National Guard and calling in the military to quell protesters flooding the nation’s capital following George Floyd’s death.
Mattis said Trump was making a ‘mockery of the Constitution’ by flexing military might against peaceful protesters, and his op-ed published in The Atlantic last week marked his first time he publicly castigated the president.
‘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,’ Mattis said in the article.
He also compared Trump’s tactics of seeking to ‘divide’ the nation to the rhetoric used by Nazis in World War II.
‘Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was ‘Divide and Conquer,’ he writes. ‘Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis – confident that we are better than our politics.’
In a fiery rebuke of Mattis, Trump wrote on Twitter: ‘Probably the only thing Barack Obama & I have in common is that we both had the honor of firing Jim Mattis, the world’s most overrated General. I asked for his letter of resignation, & felt great about it.’
The Trump v. Mattis war of words began when the retired four-star general issues his first ever rebuke of his former boss in an op-ed where he criticized Trump’s decision to bring in U.S. troops to respond to George Floyd protesters
Mattis’ sharp comments also came after law enforcement scattered protesters demonstrating in front of the White House on Monday with non-lethal pepper ball bullets filled with the same resin used in pepper spray so Trump could walk across the street for a photo-op
‘His primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations. I gave him a new life,’ Trump asserted. ‘I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him, and many others agree. Glad he is gone!’
‘His nickname was ‘Chaos’, which I didn’t like, & changed to ‘Mad Dog,’ Trump added in his two-part tweet last Wednesday, which included two false claims.
Although Trump continuously asserts that it was him who fired Mattis, the general submitted his resignation to the White House after he disagreed with Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria – amidst a plethora of other reported disagreements between the two.
Mattis’ military call sign was ‘Chaos’ which stands for ‘Colonel Has Another Outstanding Suggestion,’ a name the former general prefers.
He was given his nickname ‘Mad Dog’, which Mattis has said he does not like, years before Trump came into office.
Mattis’ op-ed launched the beginning of a series of chides against the president from former and current military leaders, including a memo that insinuated a break in stance between the president and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.