CNN’s Amanpour Puts Mattis On the Spot With Clips of Trump Rhetoric: Why Didn’t You Resign Over Any of That?

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis has made a point of emphasizing on his book tour that he will not speak ill of President Donald Trump right now.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour spoke with Mattis today and tried to press him, bringing up his decision to resign over disagreements on Syria.

She ran clips of the president’s remarks on Charlottesville, from Helsinki, what he’s said about “extreme vetting,” and even Trump talking about how he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.”

“There are many many things that President Trump said and did over the years that potentially rose to the level of unacceptability in the public sphere,” Amanpour said. “There were many many reasons potentially for somebody such as yourself to resign. Why not over any of these?”

“If you go into the military, you swear an oath to uphold the constitution,” Mattis responded. “The elected commander-in-chief is the elected commander-in-chief, but if we’re going to protect this democracy, even in its most raucous moments, even when there are fundamental issues going on, you don’t want the Defense Department coming in and saying we’re not going to defend the country today.”

He elaborated:

“The thousands of young troops — they do not get a chance to say ‘I’m going to quit today.’ So what you do is you protect the institution, you protect the country, you stand up for the constitution, but what you don’t do is get engaged in the political fray, the day-by-day, especially right now when it’s so corrosive, you don’t get involved in that and wonder why the country’s now vulnerable because you’ve allowed the troops to be distracted.”

In an interview yesterday Mattis declined to answer a question about Trump’s fitness for office. He said in another interview, “I don’t discuss sitting presidents. I believe that you owe a period of quiet.”

You can watch above, via CNN International.