Former Defense Secretary James Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or tried to limit his options in attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, the New Yorker reports.
Said one former national security official: “The president thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation.”
The official added: “We prevented a lot of bad things from happening.”
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