After long refusing to explicitly criticize a sitting president, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused President Donald Trump on Wednesday of trying to divide America and roundly denounced a militarization of the U.S. response to civil unrest.
The remarks by Mattis, an influential retired Marine general who resigned over policy differences in 2018, are the strongest to date by a former Pentagon leader over Trump's response to the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, while in Minneapolis police custody.
"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people, does not even pretend to try," Mattis, who resigned as Trump's defense secretary in 2018, wrote in a statement published by The Atlantic.