'Jim Mattis could be replaced'
The popular US defense secretary Jim Mattis could be out of a job after the mid-term elections as President Donald Trump is said to be unhappy with the man he calls "mad dog" reported The New York Times on Saturday.
According to NYT's Pentagon reporter, "over the last four months alone, the president and the defense chief have found themselves at odds over the Nato policy, whether to resume large-scale military exercises with South Korea and, privately, whether Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal has proved effective."
"Besides Mattis himself is becoming weary, some aides said, of the amount of time spent pushing back against what Defense Department officials think are capricious whims of an erratic president."
The Times said: "The defense secretary has been careful to not criticize Trump outright. Pentagon officials said Mattis had bent over backward to appear loyal, only to be contradicted by positions the president later staked out.
How much longer Mattis can continue to play the loyal Marine has become an open question in the Pentagon's E Ring, home to the Defense Department's top officials."
"Secretary Mattis lives by a code that is part of his DNA," said Capt. Jeff Davis, who retired last month from the Navy after serving as a spokesman for Mattis since early in the Trump administration. "He is genetically incapable of lying, and genetically incapable of disloyalty."
That means the defense secretary's only recourse is to stay silent, aides to Mattis said. He neither wants to publicly disagree with his boss nor is comfortable with showering false praise on Trump, NYT said.
