Top advisers in more displays of
disagreement with Trump
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[August 31, 2017]
By Jonathan Landay and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis openly differed with his commander in chief over North Korea
on Wednesday, the latest example of a once-rare public display of
disagreement by top U.S. aides that has become more frequent under
President Donald Trump.
"We are never out of diplomatic solutions," Mattis told reporters, just
hours after Trump said in a tweet that "talking is not the answer" to
the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs.
His public contradiction of Trump's position came a day after the
Pentagon chief, a retired four-star Marine general, appeared to delay
implementation of Trump's decision to ban transgender people from
enlisting in the military.
Mattis was also among the senior aides, including Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who implicitly
criticized the Republican president's response to violence at a rally
organized by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier
this month.
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Presidents often disagree with senior advisers over policies or other
matters but the differences are usually confined to internal
deliberations and become public only through leaks or much later in
memoirs, historians and former government officials said.
"I haven't seen a modern president with a pattern of this many high
officials saying things like that," said Michael Beschloss, a
presidential historian.
Asked in a television interview on Sunday whether Trump's initial
comments blaming "many sides" for the violence in Charlottesville
instead of focusing on neo-Nazis and white nationalists raised questions
about his values, Tillerson said simply: "The president speaks for
himself."
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders sought to play down the
significance of Tillerson's comments.
"I don't think anyone has tried to distance themselves. I think that at
moments maybe you have people that disagree. I think that's a healthy
thing for you to be able to have productive conversation," Sanders told
reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday.
But Beschloss said the differences being aired publicly were notable.
"These are people protecting their reputations in real time, and that is
something you usually do not see in high-level officials around a
president," he said.
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'BEST ADVICE'
Mattis has repeatedly made clear that diplomacy - backed by a credible
military option - is the only way to prevent the North Korea crisis from
escalating into a potentially devastating conflict.
When asked about Mattis' comments on Wednesday, chief Pentagon
spokesperson Dana White said: "Secretary Mattis provides the President
with his best advice. It is the President who makes the ultimate
decisions."
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![](../images/083117pics/news_t31.jpg)
President Donald Trump (L) is introduced by Defense Secretary James
Mattis (R) during the commissioning ceremony of the aircraft carrier
USS Gerald R. Ford at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia,
U.S. on July 22, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
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Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary and CIA director under
former Democratic President Barack Obama, said the airing of differences
inside the Trump administration had its roots in the president's habit
of sharing his opinions in Twitter posts.
"I think the problem is that they (advisers) are now dealing with a
president who tweets his thoughts to the country," said Panetta, who has
said he had his own policy differences with Obama.
"He's not the kind of individual who sits down with his national
security team and tries to work these issues out in a policy process
that is confined to the White House."
Earlier this month, a video posted on social media showed Mattis telling
U.S. troops that the United States has problems that its military does
not have. "You just hold the line until our country gets back to
understanding and respecting each other and showing it," he said.
The impromptu speech, believed to have been made during an Aug. 21 visit
to Jordan, came after the violence in Charlottesville in which a woman
was killed and many people were injured.
Cohn clearly distanced himself from Trump's comments on the violence,
and officials said he considered resigning.
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"Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with
white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK (Ku Klux Klan)," he said in
an interview with the Financial Times on Aug. 25.
Jennifer Lawless, a professor of government at American University, said
it was significant that several of Trump's advisers distanced themselves
from Trump's comments on Charlottesville.
"That makes it very difficult for him" to retaliate against individual
advisers, she said. "You can't go after every single member of your
Cabinet. That makes it look like maybe you've made wrong choices."
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter
Cooney)
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