President Trump deemed his former defense secretary the “world’s most overrated general” after he questioned the president’s handling of the Islamic State.
According to reports, Trump made the remark about Jim Mattis in a meeting with Democratic leadership about the situation in the Middle East on Wednesday.
Trump at meeting, per Dem source, also insulted his first defense secretary – Jim Mattis, calling him “the world’s most overrated general. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take 2 yrs. I captured them in 1 month”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 16, 2019
Trump said Mattis wasn’t “tough enough” to be a great general.
“He wasn’t tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month,” Trump was reported as saying.
On Sunday, the general predicted that ISIS would reemerge in the wake of Trump’s decision to withdraw from northeastern Syria.
“We may want a war over. We may even declare it over. You can pull your troops out, as President Obama learned the hard way, out of Iraq, but ‘the enemy gets the vote,’ we say in the military,” Mattis said. “And in this case, if we don’t keep the pressure on, then ISIS will resurge. It’s absolutely a given that they will come back.”
In the same meeting where Trump hit Mattis, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York claimed the president also called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “third-rate politician.”
