capitol hill and chaos in the region. next morning mattis handed president trump his notice saying in part you have a right to the have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours. back with me, my panel. joining us, former director of the national counterterrorism center and the national security analyst. nick, thanks for taking a few minutes. i understand in your time in government you were actually present in the situation room with the president, with the secretary of defense, with jim mattis, talking about these topics, syria, isis. just take us through what those conversations were like. well, thanks, steve. in the first year of the administration while i was still serving in government, these were issues very much on the table. the president clearly came into office with the idea that he would draw down our commitments in afghanistan and syria. and much of that first year was spent in conversations why that would be adding significantly to our risk profile
to move too quickly to take those steps. in one sense, it shouldn t come as a surprise the president moved in the direction of drawing down our troop presence in syria. on the other hand, doing so in this abrupt a manner and doing so in a way that caught allies by surprise, even caught our own troop commanders by surprise, that obviously was pretty unconventional and pretty disruptive. remember, from the early days there when trump brought mattis in to the administration, he seemed to great afekds for him. loved the nickname mad dog. loved the military profile and military background. to see where it s ended a couple years later. it s been about a year since you were there. if you could describe the relationship between the two that you observed. was there a decline? how would you describe the reship that you got to watch? clearly, the early period of the administration, the president was reliant on people around him with much more experience dealing with national security issues.
president became simply more confident his instincts were the right north star to the following. that in effect, when he was listening to some of these experts, even people with such distinguished trash records as secretary mattis, they ended up taking him in directions he didn t want to go. sustaining the engagement in afghanistan, for example. that was something the president agreed to only very reluctantly and made clear when he agreed to extend our campaign in afghanistan that it wasn t something he was happy with, and he was going to revisit the issue again and again. so it s my sense that the president in a sense gained confidence in his own ability to make these decisions. certainly you heard him say that when he s talked about knowing about as much as isis as the jenning. obviously, that puts secretary mattis in a very difficult position. pushing a president to do something he didn t want to do is not a viable position for very long for a cabinet secretary. let me bring the p
in here. beth, start with you. where does trump s foreign policy go from here? great question. he s got john bolton in as national security advisers. somebody he trusts very much. pompeo he seems to like. as we ve seen with president trump and many other people he turns on people on the dime. they re only in his good graces for however long he chooses to let them stay there. i think the bigger issue, though now, what we saw last week was that the mattis deciding to leave and to do so in the manner he did, basic repudiation of trumpism in terms of dealing with foreign powers, you know, the importance of alliances. not immediately, you know, believing that places like russia and china have our best interests at heart. he drove a wedge with establishment republicans in way that hadn t happened with other issues. they clearly, they stepped out. mitch mcconnell issued a statement very much concerned about what mattis did, and basically taking trump to task
welcome back to hardball. more now on a major story breaking. president trump announced defense secretary james mattis will be quitting at the end of february. nbc news saying general mattis met with the president earlier today and told him he d be leaving due to a difference of opinion on some issues. this comes one day, of course, after the president announced his plans to withdraw troops from syria. nbc doesn t know if the topic of syria came up in their meeting today. senator lindsey graham said that mattis had told him it wasn t the right time to leave syria. in his striking resignation letter to the president today which he hand delivered this morning mattis wrote, you have the right to make a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours citing differences between their