Former Defense Secretary Mattis Issues Stunning Rebuke Of Trump - NPR

President Donald Trump in October 2018 with, from left, Army Chief of Staff Gen.

Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.

Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.

Jim Mattis, who resigned as President Trump's defense secretary nearly a year-and-a-half ago over policy differences, has issued an extraordinary critique of the White House's handling of nationwide unrest, saying Trump has sought to divide Americans, and warning against "militarizing our response" to the protests.

"Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside," Mattis wrote, referring to a series of events on Monday in which peaceful protesters were cleared from around the White House to make way for an impromptu appearance by the president, Bible in hand, outside a historic church.

The broadside came on the same day that current Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at a Pentagon briefing that he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act — which allows the president to deploy the military within the United States — something Trump had threatened to do in a televised speech on Monday.

It is extraordinarily rare for military leadership to speak out against a sitting president, though Trump has come in for implicit criticism from senior ranks.

After Trump said of a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, which turned violent, that there were "very fine people on both sides," each of the military service chiefs — as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – issued statements condemning bigotry.

Joe Dunford, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman at the time.

Just this week, two former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairmen, Gen.

"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try."

The president responded to the criticism in a tweet, calling Mattis "the world's most overrated General," an insult Trump has fired off in the past