Since summer, Mattis had been quietly talking about leaving by the end of the year. For months, his long-term schedule included no events after December and he was wearing down the pages of his copy of Marcus Aurelius’s book on meditations trying to deal with the stress. But the betrayal of the Kurds was the tipping point. He printed out the ready-to-go letter of resignation that he, like so many in Trump’s administration, had spent hours writing and rewriting just in case, and brought it with him to the White House, where he made one last effort to convince Trump to change his mind. After
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