All 10 living former secretaries of defense signed on to an opinion article that implicitly questioned Trump’s willingness to follow his constitutional duty to peacefully relinquish power on Jan. 20.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try,” Mattis wrote. “Instead he tries to divide us.”
A former Marine, he was the editor behind the Small Wars Journal, a online publication that was a must-read for anyone interested in counterinsurgency operations during the Iraq-and-Afghanistan era.