Eli Lake, Columnist

If Mattis Goes, Trump Will Miss Him

The president needs a secretary of defense who inspires bipartisan trust in a crisis.

October 16, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

One of these guys has bipartisan credibility.
Photographer: Pool/Getty Images North America

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It took nearly two years, but President Donald Trump has finally said something unflattering about Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Rumors of the president’s unhappiness with Mattis date back several months, yet only last weekend did Trump himself express any, telling “60 Minutes” that he thinks the retired four-star Marine general “is sort of a Democrat.”

In another era, when retired generals gravitated toward the center, being called a Democrat by a Republican president would be worth its weight in Sunday talk-show invitations. In Trump’s Washington, the remark is the kiss of death. So it’s worth asking why Trump thinks his secretary of defense is on the other team.