, Columnist
It’s Probably No Big Deal When Mattis Departs
The secretary of defense is no longer restraining the president anyway.
Trump’s gonna Trump.
Photographer: Ron Sachs/Pool, via Getty Images
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Perhaps Jim Mattis should get new business cards, changing his job title from “Secretary of Defense” to “Adult in the Room.” Indeed, there is no question that he has been a moderating influence on a president who lacks that attribute entirely. As Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, put it, Mattis has been “the saucer that cools the coffee.”
If so, we are all in sudden danger of scalding.