Politics
11:33, 31-Aug-2017
Fresh administration split seen as Mattis contradicts Trump on DPRK
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After splits between senior members of the Trump administration with the president over Charlottesville, US Defense Secretary James Mattis openly differed with his commander in chief over the DPRK on Wednesday.
“We are never out of diplomatic solutions,” Mattis told reporters, just hours after Donald Trump said in a tweet that “talking is not the answer” to the standoff over the DPRK’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Mattis insisted that diplomatic solutions on the DPRK remain, shortly after Trump tweeted that "talking is not the answer." /Twitter Screenshot
Mattis insisted that diplomatic solutions on the DPRK remain, shortly after Trump tweeted that "talking is not the answer." /Twitter Screenshot
Mattis has repeatedly made clear that diplomacy - backed by a credible military option - is the only way to prevent tensions on the Korean Peninsula from escalating into a potentially devastating conflict.
His public contradiction of President Trump’s position came a day after the 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.
Earlier this month, a video posted on social media showed Mattis telling US 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.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis speaks to reporters on board a flight to Jordan for the start of a regional tour on August 20, 2017. The next day he was recorded telling US troops that the United States has problems that its military does not have. /AFP Photo
US Defense Secretary James Mattis speaks to reporters on board a flight to Jordan for the start of a regional tour on August 20, 2017. The next day he was recorded telling US troops that the United States has problems that its military does not have. /AFP Photo
The impromptu speech, believed to have been made during an August 21 visit to Jordan, came after the violence in Charlottesville in which a woman was killed and many people were injured.
Jennifer Lawless, a professor of government at American University, told Reuters 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.”
Source(s): Reuters