Rick Wilson: Jim Mattis Was the Only Thing Keeping Trump's Insane Clown Posse in Check

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jim-mattis-was-the-only-thing-keeping-trumps-insane-clown-posse-in-check?ref=home


Jim Mattis Was the Only Thing Keeping Trump’s Insane Clown Posse in Check
Steady, thoughtful, and respected, Mattis was America’s insurance policy against Trump’s idiocy. If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.
Rick Wilson
12.21.18 9:17 AM ET

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Just on the edge of Trump’s constant bleating about “his generals” was the sour odor of jealousy. It’s not hard to understand why.

Low, weak men like Donald Trump may pretend to praise people like Mattis, but always secretly revile those who possess virtues and values they lack. Trump resented Mattis for his accomplishments, his judgment, and his knowledge. Donald Trump, a man of the most shallow intellect and indifferent ability, faced a man who has forgotten more about war, diplomacy, and strategy that Trump has ever learned.

Mattis raised young Marines from every ethnic background into warriors fighting for a bigger idea than race or ethnicity; Trump is the most overt racist to hold the American presidency since Woodrow Wilson. Trump believes the troops exist for performance-art-like border-wall creation and parades to honor the Maximum Donald; Mattis knows they’re putting their lives on the line for the nation and the Constitution, and he honors them with missions that make America safer, not his ego bigger.

Trump knows on some deep, basal level that he’s a figure of mockery and cordial (at best) dislike by leaders of America’s traditional allies, and is seen as an easy mark by our adversaries. Trump saw how often Mattis had to clean up messes President Best Brain made in China, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and across Europe. Worse, he saw that the leaders of those nations respected Mattis in a way he couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal.

One supreme irony of Jim Mattis working for Donald Trump was apparent to me from the beginning. Mattis wasn’t just a better man on every axis; Trump was the kind of man Jim Mattis spent his career training to defeat; the authoritarians and oppressors of this world, the big-bore despots and the small-bore warlords. The type of people Trump either admires or lets himself be manipulated by—Putin, Erdogan, Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and others—are the kind of men Mattis sees as obvious adversaries of the United States. Mattis sees the risks of failed states, while Trump seems determined to create one. Mattis understands American institutions; Trump monomaniacally craves royalty, a literal Imperial Presidency.

Mattis was and is a man of honor who did his best to steer Donald Trump away from disaster, and found himself hated for it. Mattis understood the importance and power of the U.S. military as an institution under civilian control, and as a repository of core American values. It must have been galling to him to serve this cowardly, venal, weak, and capricious man, but it was one more mission in a lifetime of service.

The departure of Jim Mattis from his role as secretary of defense is one more dangerous moment in a constellation of dangerous moments for this country, and this presidency. If you’re not nervous yet, you’re not paying attention.