Cliff Sims

General Mattis felt strongly that we had a US national security interest in Syria that merited keeping US troops there, continuing to engage there in a way that President Trump did not feel inclined to do.

And essentially what General Mattis did was say, I can no longer in good conscience

based on my sincerely held beliefs, execute on the president's wishes because I disagree with him on this policy.

Now, I actually respect that because the dishonorable thing to do was what so many others did, which was, I disagree with the president, but I know better than him.

And so I'm gonna slow roll

his wishes.

I'm not going to execute on his wishes.

I'm not going to do what the duly elected president of the United States has decided to do.

That's more nefarious in my mind.

So, you know, General Mattis has subsequently said a lot of negative things about President Trump that I happen to disagree with.

But

on that particular reasoning for resigning, I understand why he did, even if I would disagree with him on that.

And I think he did the right thing by leaving rather than not executing on the president's agenda.

Well, in the White House, it's actually not a...

I say it's not a large organization.

They're much more constrained because the White House has a finite budget for personnel that they cannot go over.

And the way that you...

subsidize that, so to speak, is you'll have agencies detail people to the White House.

So I actually found that in the White House itself, there's not a lot of fat to be trimmed.

Now the government, my God, the amount of fat there is to trim is just like beyond imagination.