Posted on 09/01/2017 9:33:54 AM PDT by Rusty0604
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday slammed news reports suggesting he was breaking with the president on North Korea a day earlier.
“I can’t help people who misinterpret things. I’ll do my best to call it like I see it, but right now if I say ‘six’ and the president says ‘half a dozen,’ they’re going to say I disagree with him, so let’s just get over that,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
He added, “and if that’s the story that some people want to write then they’ll find the way they’ll sort out something, but there was nothing contradictory there.” News reports suggested Mattis had broken with Trump on North Korea, after Trump tweeted on North Korea, “Talking is not the answer!” and he had later told a reporter: “We’re never out of diplomatic solutions.”
“Diplomatic is a lot more than just the narrow slice of talking to North Korea,” he said. “So there was no contradiction at all there.”
He said if had he been asked about the tweet, he would have said that he agreed with the president. “I agree with the president — we should not be talking right now to a nation that’s firing missiles over the top of Japan, an ally,” he said.
Mattis also ridiculed recent reports that suggested an impromptu speech he gave to troops in Jordan last week was a rebuke to the president, as some news reports said.
“Literally I’m using the president’s thoughts and they thought that I was distancing from the president. So I mean it shows how ludicrous this really is,” he said. “I’m not trying to make fun of people who write along those lines, but I literally can take the president’s themes and use them, and I’m still seen as at odds with the president.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Glad to hear that Mattis is on board.
It’s not Mattis I’m really that worried about. I’m far more concerned about McMaster, and what his end goals really are.
Some think McMaster will soon be sent to supervise troops in Afghanistan, so the president can remove him from the center of White House action without firing him. Firing would open up yet another can of worms.
I’ve heard that too.
Mattis really thinks well on his feet; and speaks well extemporaneously, during this little set-to with the Fake Media; and that off the cuff talk to the troopies over in the hot sandbox was amazing. I thought it was eloquent.
He probably got it from Free Republic.☺
:-)
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