“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 says. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.”
Following his two-year stint as Pentagon chief that ended in December 2018, Mattis took pains to avoid questions about Trump’s behavior. What provoked him to speak out now, he says, was Trump’s inclination to use active duty troops to quell the violent unrest that has erupted across the country since George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died last week in Minneapolis police custody.
In the White House Rose Garden on Monday, Trump said he had instructed every governor to “deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets,” and if local leaders didn’t take such steps, he said, “then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” He then dispatched law enforcement officers to clear Lafayette Park outside the White House of more than a thousand protestors with pepper balls and rubber bullets and police officers swinging riot shields.
The Administration officials walked through the park before Trump stopped in front of the parish house of St. John’s Church, which had been vandalized the night before when protestors ignited a fire in the basement. He stood for pictures and requested his aides, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley, who serves as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, to join. In the eyes of many Administration critics, the two men became “props” in a photo-op, which threatened the military’s longstanding reputation for non-partisanship.
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