The now-retired General James Mattis, instead of thanking President Trump for the opportunity to serve in a high role in his administration, is going all out to please the swamp and criticize him.

According to a statement published in the Atlantic Monthly, he wrote:

 “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

Unite the American people? What disingenuous piety from General Mattis. How does Trump unite with people who hate him so much they were promising to impeach him before he took the oath of office as president?
 

General Mattis also speaks of “mature leadership.” Mature? Remember what Rep. Rashida Tlaib said on the day she was sworn in as a member of Congress? “We’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the mother f**ker.” Is this an example of the kind of “mature leadership” General Mattis would prefer? Is Maxine Waters a “mature leader”? Has she been trying to unite America for the past three years?

How about those who were telling the American people that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians and was probably a Russian asset? Remember that? Were they looking to unite the American people? How about Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler, who contrived a baseless impeachment of the President? Are these “mature leaders”? Were they trying to bring the nation together? How about the mainstream media, whose coverage of the president is about 95% negative and often dishonest? Or “entertainers,” like the one who thought the image of a bloodied, beheaded Donald Trump was appropriate commentary? Are these people exemplars of “our civil society”? Are we to unite with people like this? No, thank you, General Mattis. No, thank you.

Meanwhile, in spite of all the hell they have heaped on this man, he has accomplished more substantive good in three years than the last four presidents combined in the prior twenty-eight years. His policies, one after another, are policies which enhance individual liberty and prosperity for everyone. They are policies which enhance the agency of man. And this, in my opinion, is why the very jaws of hell have gaped open wide after him.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Didn’t like him. Didn’t trust him. But he has proven to be the president I had always voted for, but never got. And, as others have noted, he has proven to be the great clarifier. He causes people to reveal for all to see what really appeals to their hearts: the superficialities of the ankle biters, the hollow promises of the socialists, or the substance of liberty. Only mature leaders stand undeterred for liberty. There are very few of them, and they are always vilified, marginalized, and dismissed. But this mature leader is the president. They have been trying to destroy him for four years, without success.

If the courage and energy to stand for individual liberty, even under a withering assault day after day, year after year, is what one is looking for in a president, then President Donald Trump, for the most part, has been magnificent.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain source