Guy Snodgrass, who worked as a top aide to former Defense Secretary James Mattis, says that while he was surprised that Mattis recently issued a rare public criticism of President Trump, he also believes he was eager to speak up.
“Frankly, I think there’s an element of Mattis that just didn’t want to miss the boat,” Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, a former Pentagon communications director and Mattis’s chief speechwriter, told the Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast.
“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.” Several top generals have publicly lambasted the president for politicizing the military in recent days. Mattis’s statement, which was first reported by the Atlantic, is unequivocal about the threat which Mattis believes Trump poses.
“I think that [ordering troops to quash protest] was the breaking point,” Snodgrass said. “You had Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who’s of course widely respected on both sides of the aisle, he was the first out of the gate to release a statement saying that he deplored Trump’s leadership and his use of the military in a very politicized fashion.”
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