With Mattis gone, 'time to be afraid' of 3 a.m. call for Donald Trump

https://www.dw.com/en/with-mattis-gone-time-to-be-afraid-of-3-am-call-for-donald-trump/a-46837150

With Mattis gone, 'time to be afraid' of 3 a.m. call for Donald Trump

Date 21.12.2018
Author Michael Knigge (Washington)


One day after James Mattis announced his resignation as secretary of defense in a scathing letter on the heels of President Donald Trump's sudden decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria, the hashtag #TrumpResign was trending on Twitter in Washington. But if one safe prediction can be made in a week that was unusually turbulent even by Trump era standards, then it is that any kind of musings about this president resigning are wishful thinking.

"I don't see any chance for Trump resigning, unless there were some impeachment proceedings, the way Richard Nixon did when he resigned," said Mark Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). "Resigning would be an admission of defeat for a man who insists on winning, winning, winning, so I don't think we can expect a Trump resignation as a solution the growing concerns people have."

Mattis' announced exit also dashed whatever remained of the previous hopes about a so-called internal opposition to Trump inside the administration. While Mattis himself had repeatedly tried to slow-walk what he viewed as some of the president's most egregious decisions, that tactic only appeared to work for a limited time, and was ultimately doomed when Mattis' influence began waning months ago.

While there still are likely some administration officials left who will try use bureaucratic inertia to stymie what they view as ill-advised moves by the president, at the end of the day, they will have to fall in line, said Fitzpatrick. "Trump is the commander-in-chief and people will salute."
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The Trump administration and the world, noted the experts, have been fortunate until now that this president has not yet had to deal with the kind of national security crisis that a US president usually has to face in his tenure. But eventually, they said, such a crisis, the famous "3 a.m. phone call" to the White House, is likely to come. And with someone like Pentagon chief Mattis, who was widely viewed as a responsible international security leader, gone, the prospects of influencing or intervening in Trump's decision making process have dimmed.
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