“His entire context for the military at this point was watching the movie Patton,” said a retired general who served with Mattis, Dunford, and John Kelly. “The guy had no idea what a general did. He respected their power and status and he wanted to have them around him because he felt that having generals around him—‘my generals’—would make him appear even more powerful. What he hadn’t bargained for was the fact that his generals were going to oppose him on moral grounds on many things. He just thought they were all about power, and the wielding of power and destruction.”
