What, Mattis wondered, made Trump think anyone could make it alone in the world? What reading of history, what intellectual thought could give a person any confidence in that? A country always needed allies, he was sure. A person always needed allies. And this was the tragedy of Trump’s leadership and the bottom line: “It was inexplicable to think otherwise. It was indefensible. It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism.”
