The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

That afternoon, I learned that Mattis was in the Oval alone with Trump, and a previously scheduled bill-signing ceremony was running very late. As we were talking, Mattis came out, with Trump right behind him. I could tell instantly something was up. Mattis seemed stunned to see me waiting, but he shook hands without much of an expression. Trump said, “John, come on in,” which I did, with just the two of us in the Oval. “He’s leaving,” said Trump. “I never really liked him.” After the bill-signing ceremony, Trump and I talked for roughly twenty minutes on how to handle the Mattis departure. Trump wanted to put out a tweet before Mattis’s public relations machine got rolling. Mattis had given Trump a long resignation letter explaining why he was leaving, unquestionably written for widespread public distribution, which Trump had not actually read. Instead, he had simply left it on the Resolute desk, from which it had been removed for the bill-signing ceremony. When we retrieved the letter, I read with surprise that Mattis wanted to serve until the end of February, spending his remaining time as Secretary of Defense testifying before Congress and speaking at the February NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting. Even more surprising to Trump, given the tenor of his conversation with Mattis, was the letter’s substance, rejecting Trump’s policies. I explained to Trump that the scheduling was completely untenable, though I was not sure it sank in. He was, however, more and more expressiv...