Jim Mattis

‘Whatever it takes, we need a wall’: Why the final Donald Trump crisis of 2018 isn't going away in 2019

What’s Donald Trump playing at with his $5 billion demand for a wall and shutting down the government - the third in the last 12 months - in Christmas season? For one, this has echoes of what his chief strategist and inscrutable mastermind of the 2016 campaign Steve Bannon told a reporter after Trump pulled off the greatest political upset in American history: "Brother, Hollywood doesn't make movies where the bad guys win" - a riff on Gregory Peck's lines from Twelve O'Clock High.

8-year-old Guatemala boy dies in US immigration custody as Donald Trump continues railing about border wall

An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in government custody in New Mexico early Tuesday, U.S. immigration authorities said, marking the second death of an immigrant child in detention this month.

US military says order to withdraw American troops from Syria signed; Donald Trump, Recep Erdogan agree to coordinate pullout

The order to withdraw American troops from Syria has been signed, the US military said Sunday, after President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart agreed to prevent a power vacuum in the wake of the controversial move.

Donald Trump pulls up Jim Mattis' last day in office; deputy Patrick Shanahan to take over as acting defense secretary on 1 Jan

Jim Mattis resigned as the US Secretary of Defense on Thursday in protest over Donald Trump's decision to pull all US troops out of Syria.

Emmanuel Macron says 'an ally must be reliable' after Donald Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

French president Emmanuel Macron's comments come after Donald Trump pulled out US troops from Syria, leaving thousands of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, which the Pentagon spent years training and arming against IS, vulnerable to Turkish attack.

Scared and isolated, Donald Trump drags US Govt to shutdown, gambles with jobs of 800,000 employees over demand of $5 bn for border wall

More than 400,000 US government employees will go without pay, 380,000 will be put on leave without pay as America hurtles towards a partial government shutdown days before the Christmas holidays and all this is happening over another Donald Trump tantrum. That's the short story of a wild and endless day in Washington DC when many stunned lawmakers who had just gone home for the holidays had to scramble back on flights and trains to the capital city to cast their votes for a downright ridiculous Trump negotiation drama.

Donald Trump says he 'gave Jim Mattis a second chance", referring to ex-US Marine general's exit as military leader under Barack Obama

United States President Donald Trump on Saturday claimed that he gave Defence Secretary James Mattis a "second chance" after the retired Marine general was "ingloriously fired" from military leadership by former president Barack Obama.

US envoy to anti-Islamic State coalition Brett McGurk resigns in protest over Donald Trump's Syria withdrawal

McGurk, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump, said in his resignation letter that the militants were on the run, but not yet defeated, and that the premature pullout of American forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to Islamic State

Jim Mattis warns against allowing alliances to fray; resignation letter lays out challenges for next Pentagon chief

The extraordinary resignation letter that US defence secretary Jim Mattis handed to a surprised President Donald Trump was not just a product of two years of accumulating frustration with an impulsive boss, but an outline of the strategic hazards facing the next Pentagon chief.

James Mattis' resignation hands Taliban advantage in Afghanistan, likely to set Indian policymakers scrambling

James Mattis resigned with a scathing letter which essentially underlined his strong differences with his Commander-in-Chief