Secretary of Defense James Mattis openly defies Donald Trump’s orders

| 8:16 pm EDT August 29, 2017
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Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense, retired General James Mattis, has recently displayed open frustration with Donald Trump’s antics. Now a fed-up Mattis is taking things further – much further. At this point he’s openly defying Trump’s order that transgender people must be kicked out of the United States military, and he’s using little more than a technicality in the name of refusing to implement it.

Mattis says he’s waiting on the results of an expert study, and until then, he’ll allow transgender people to continue serving in the military, according to USA Today (link). It’s not clear what Mattis plans to do once that study is completed. It will likely confirm what is already widely known: transgender troops are no disruption and minimal cost to the military. But for now, Mattis is using a very thinly veiled excuse to defy Trump’s order.

This comes just days after James Mattis spoke to a group of active duty U.S. military members and told them “You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it,” in what was yet again a thinly veiled criticism of Donald Trump’s words and behavior (link). Numerous people in the crowd had their phones out, so Mattis had to have known that his remarks were being recorded and would go public, meaning that he was trying to send a message to Trump and to America. But now he’s going further.

Because General Mattis is retired from the military and he’s now serving in the civilian post of Secretary of Defense, Donald Trump cannot “order” him to implement the transgender ban in his role as Commander in Chief. Trump can only order Mattis to do so in the sense of a boss ordering an employee. With Mattis refusing to follow that order, the most Trump can do is fire him – and it’s doubtful Trump has the stones to fire the most respected member of his cabinet.