Jeh Johnson, homeland security secretary under former President Barack Obama, implored the military figures acting as key White House officials to put “country first” and continue to serve in the Trump administration.
“There’s been a lot of talk this week about people resigning from the White House, whether people should resign from the White House,” Johnson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Frankly, if John Kelly, my friend John Kelly or my friend Jim Mattis came to me and said, ‘I’m thinking about resigning from this White House, I’d say, ‘absolutely not.'”
Johnson added national security adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general, and White House chief of staff Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, along with Secretary of Defense Mattis, had to stay “to right the ship.”
Johnson, who headed the Department of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017, also said it was alarming that Confederate monuments were becoming “rallying points for white nationalism” from a security perspective.
“I salute those in cities and states who are taking down a lot of these monuments for reasons of public safety and security,” he said.
