general mattis resigned in protest of the president s policies and even released a letter detailing their differences. now, there was a long, proud tradition of that in the military and in u.s. government service, but you don t see it much anymore, because people these days want to stay as close to power, as long as they possibly can. but mattis resigned. and his resignation letter is polite, but very clear about the president s actions. now, because of that letter, the president got angry and moved up mattis departure date, essentially shoving mouth in door. that is what you get for loyal service to this president. so, enjoy the ride. another thing that happened today was also unusual, not something you hear every day, an american president doing really what no american president has done until now, endorsing this soviet invasion of afghanistan and asking for a new russian presence there. russia used to be the soviet union. afghanistan made it russia. because they went bankrupt fig
but as you know, president obama fired him and essentially, so did i. keeping em honest, if essentially fired means did not fire, what the president said would be true. it doesn t mean that, however. general mattis resigned in protest of the president s policies and even released a letter detailing their differences. now, there was a long, proud tradition of that in the military and in u.s. government service, but you don t see it much anymore, because people these days want to stay as close to power, as long as they possibly can. but mattis resigned. and his resignation letter is polite, but very clear about the president s actions. now, because of that letter, the president got angry and moved up mattis departure date, essentially shoving mouth in door. that is what you get for loyal service to this president. so, enjoy the ride. another thing that happened today was also unusual, not something you hear every day, an american president doing really what no american president
angrily react to this, including moving up mattis departure date. mattis was to stay on until the end of february. the president decided the secretary of defense needed to be out on january 1st. this is another occasion where he, yes, he talks about central casting, talks about being tight with the military. talks about respecting them. but if the moment there s any suggestion that one of them may turn on him or even criticize or get in the way, he hits them back even harder. it s also this example in microcosm of the trump presidency that he praises mattis because he didn t read the resignation letter. mckristol talked about mattis resignation. i want to remind folks about this. i personally think it was valuable. i think maybe it causes the american people to take pause and say, wait a minute, if we have someone who is as selfless, as committed as jim mattis resigns his position, walking away from all the responsibility
with other allies. what are you hearing is likely to be the real fallout from this decision? well, i was hearing alarm before president trump moved up mattis retirement date. if he hoped to tamp down the criticism of his syria decision by getting mattis out of the way, i think this is going to have the opposite effect. already, the pentagon had been scrambling to manage this decision, to see if maybe french and british forces could back fill them in syria, somehow protect their kurdish allies and also deflect the influence of iran, but when i last checked in, that was still being worked, at least to save the air war over syria. all of this also came from a phone call between president trump and erdogan of turkey, and that s left allies concerned that one phone call could change months, years of work on this problem, which was supposed to lead to a stepped-down withdrawal, leaving some
the president grew increasingly angry as he watched growing media reports. by sunday trump decided that the two couldn t work together and pushed up mattis s exit up to next week. we have a national political reporter for nbc news joining us with more details. let s talk about the departure of mattis or the updated exit of mattis. what does that reveal about how things went down between president trump and jim mattis, the fact that he is being pushed out ahead of schedule. it shows how upset president trump is at having this play out publically, this really searing resignation letter making clear the differences with president trump not only on policy issues, but also on basic values. and the president unwilling to let it go out there publically that the secretary of defense essentially wanted no part in the administration. so instead mattis found out