Former Defense Secretary James Mattis is on a book tour promoting, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead.” In a series of interviews, he continues to say he won’t “discuss sitting presidents,” but that isn’t stopping journalists from asking. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour played a series of clips of Trump’s behavior that “potentially rose to the level of unacceptability.” Amanpour remarked. “There were many many reasons potentially for somebody such as yourself to resign. Why not over any of these?” Mattis took a military stance on the issue saying:

“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.”

https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1168935243954446342

Mattis says one day he will say more, “there will come a time when it’s right for me to talk about strategy and policy.” But he couldn’t promise it will be before the 2020 election:

“I don’t think right now for a person steeped in the military tradition, in the defense department, that I should be speaking up on things that are political assessments.”

Watch more of the interview above.