Eight months out of the Trump administration, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis gently criticized President Trump, tribalism and the current state of U.S. politics in a new excerpt of his forthcoming book published in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday.
Mattis also pointedly called Nike a “great” American company. While perhaps an unintentional dig on Mattis’ part, President Trump and many of his supporters have had an ongoing beef with the athletic apparel giant for hiring Colin Kapernick as a spokesperson, the former athlete who started the trend of kneeling for the National Anthem to highlight racial inequality in America.
Read the veiled critique below:
“Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart. What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions,” he wrote.
“All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment—and one that can be reversed. We all know that we’re better than our current politics. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment.”
