Jim Mattis Explains Why He Resigned as Secretary of Defense

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Did you believe that President Trump was losing Syria and you didn’t want to be any part of it?

JAMES MATTIS, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: I thought that we needed to maintain an influence in Syria but I laid this out in the letter explaining why I believed I needed to leave the administration, because I believe strongly in allies. I think that’s our unique strength. When this town was hit on 9/11 back in 2001, within 60 days, I was fighting in Afghanistan. And joining me there were troops from Canada and the United Kingdom, Norway and Germany, Turkey and Jordan, New Zealand and Australia. Now, none of their cities had been attacked. They were there because we were there, because we had been attacked, our values had been attacked. And I think that’s what we have to look at. What are the shared values inside our own country? We don’t talk about those right now. We only talk about what we don’t share. What are the shares values among the nations?

AMANPOUR: The president has said ISIS has been defeated. Are you concerned that, in fact? it’s coming back?

MATTIS: It’s not the sort of thing that you defeat even if you take away the geography they once owed. It’s an idea that has got to be defeated. And that’s stronger, much more difficult, it will take longer.

AMANPOUR: General Mattis, you resigned over Syria, you’ve made your letter public. But there are many, many things that President Trump said and did over the years that potentially rose to the level of unacceptability in the public sphere. Let’s just play some of his soundbites.

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. It’s working out very nicely and we’re going to have a very, very strict ban and we’re going to have extreme vetting which we should have had in this country for many years. I was really tough and so was he and we go back and forth and then we fell in love. OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.

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AMANPOUR: So, Secretary Mattis, President Trump opining on a whole load of issues, the last one, we fell in love, talking about the North Korean leader. There are many, many reasons, potentially, for somebody such as yourself to resign. Why not over any of these?

MATTIS: Christiane, if you go into the military you swear an oath to uphold the constitution. The elected commander in chief is the elected commander in chief.