Donald Trump is having trouble getting people to work in his cabinet, in his White House, in Washington, D.C. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis just offered his resignation, then POTUS fired him. Now, the man sitting in the Oval Office has surrounded himself with an acting, not an active, group of men. Defense Secretary is a huge job, so this has been Trump’s attempt to fill it.
Trump offered a 36-year-old the job of chief of staff. The guy decided to spend more time with his family. The job of attorney general (AG) is huge, too. Thus far, Trump has nominated a yes man to fill it. The acting AG may have littered the highway to his present position with near-crimes if not full crimes.
Then, there was the job of secretary of defense. It seems, Trump wanted retired General David Petraeus for the position. The general formerly served as CIA director between 2011 and 2012, plus he was commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Then, he retired.
Mattis and Petraeus have been friends for a long time. It appears that General Petraeus will not come out of retirement to take the position. That made sense. So many of those around the president have been forced to retain their own attorneys — some as a cautionary tactic but others as a critical act of being sucked into Trump’s crime-infested environment.
Petraeus told BBC Radio Four that he did not think that his own views matched the views of Donald Trump. A friend told BBC:
‘…he cannot envision returning to government at this time. It’s not unreasonable to ask after 17 years of war, “is this the best way to go about it. It doesn’t mean that I agree, necessarily, with the recent decisions, but to be truthful we don’t know the details of the policy yet.”‘
At one point, the general said that pulling U.S. troops out of Syria would create too huge a difference between the two men, according to TIME magazine:
‘I think there does have to be policy alignment (with Trump), and I’m not sure that exists, I’m afraid. You have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.’
In 2016, reports came out hinting that General Petraeus was among Trump’s top picks for the job of defense secretary. At the time, Petraeus appeared to indicate that he would take the job, if Trump offered it to him. However, times have changed, and Petraeus is not inclined to take a White House job now.
Unfortunately, Petraeus passed classified government information to his mistress in 2015. He was sentenced to just two years of probation along with a $100,000 fine. Under normal circumstances, that would take him out of the running.
There have also been rumors that Trump’s best golfing buddy, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) might be open to taking the position of the secretary of defense. Before Graham served in the Senate, he was an officer and a judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force in 1982. In 1984, he went on active duty and served in Europe.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
