Convinced that there were not enough votes in the House to secure $5.7 billion for the wall, Trump had bowed to political reality. This was a rare concession from a president accustomed to sparring until he got his way. His retreat averted a government shutdown over Christmas, a prospect Republican leaders universally regarded as a political loser, one easily branded “the Trump shutdown” thanks to the president’s eagerness to own it in his earlier meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
As he celebrated the agreement to avoid a shutdown, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “You remember my favorite country saying: There’s no education in the second kick of a mule. We’ve been down this path before, and I don’t believe we’ll go down this path again.”
When Trump tuned in to conservative media, he faced a full-scale rebellion. Rush Limbaugh told his millions of radio listeners, “Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything.” Ann Coulter published a column titled “Gutless President in Wall-less Country” and predicted in a podcast that Trump’s tenure will go down in history as “a joke presidency.” Even on the curved white couch of Fox & Friends, a cradle of Trump sycophancy each morning, the host Brian Kilmeade chided him over the compromise spending bill.
Congressman Mark Meadows and other members of the House Freedom Caucus joined in the howls of indignation, warning Trump personally and in media appearances that he was being led astray. They implored the president to reject the terms, demand his proposed $5.7 billion in wall funding, and force a government shutdown if that’s what it took.
At the White House, Trump was in a tailspin as he absorbed the convulsions within his political base. On December 20, with just one day until the government funding deadline, Trump threatened to veto the compromise bill unless it included wall funding. The president’s sudden shift torpedoed the deal negotiated earlier in the week. At the end of December 21, funding for numerous agencies expired, shutting down large parts of the federal government, halting numerous services, and sending close to 400,000 workers home without pay indefinitely. Trump dug in and vowed not to budge until Democrats agreed to fund wall construction. The president warned that the shutdown could last “a very long time.”
“Do we succumb to tyranny of radio talk show hosts? We have two talk radio hosts who influenced the president. That’s tyranny, isn’t it?” an exasperated Bob Corker, who was retiring from the Senate, told reporters at the Capitol. “This is a juvenile place we find ourselves. The reason we’re here is that we have a couple talk radio hosts that get the president spun up.”
Plunging into a government shutdown just before Christmas with no plan to reopen it was classic Trump. It was a decision made in duress. “It was a suicide mission,” one of Trump’s former White House advisers said. “There was no off-ramp. There was no way the Democrats would just back down. There was no way to win. It was done based on impulse and emotion and dogmatism and a visceral reaction rather than a strategic calculation. That’s indicative of a lot of the presidency and who he is.”
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Trump canceled his holiday vacation plans, staying at the White House in light of the government shutdown while Melania and Barron flew to sunny Palm Beach to hang out at Mar-a-Lago. Marooned for the pre-Christmas weekend at the White House, Trump watched hours of cable news and stewed over the coverage—not only of the shutdown, but also of Mattis’s resignation. Mattis’s letter—distributed to reporters by his aides—was interpreted in the media as a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview.
Trump’s anger reached a boiling point early on the morning of December 23. At 9:00 a.m. in Washington, he called Patrick Shanahan, who was then in Seattle, where it was 6:00 a.m. Shanahan was preparing to depart for a family vacation to Mexico over Christmas. Trump told him he wanted him to be his new defense secretary, starting immediately, and complained about Mattis’s “attack” letter. Shanahan defended Mattis but also pleaded with Trump to allow the gargantuan Defense Department a more reasonable transition period. Shanahan often said he had gotten a Ph.D. in foreign policy watching Mattis, and he wanted to ask him more critical questions before he left. Trump grudgingly agreed Mattis could stay, but only until December 31. Shanahan canceled his trip and flew back to Washington. That same morning, Sweeney warned Mattis’s staff, “Anticipate the tweet.”
Mattis had just received a phone call from Mike Pompeo, who said the president was abruptly forcing him out. Trump was removing the defense secretary two months ahead of schedule, only he was apparently too afraid to tell Mattis himself, so he made the secretary of state call him instead. Administration officials said Trump was retaliating against the negative news coverage, which he baselessly suspected Mattis had helped stoke.
Trump’s tweet arrived at 11:46 a.m. announcing that Patrick Shanahan, who was Mattis’s No. 2 and for many years prior was an executive at Boeing, one of the largest defense contractors, would become acting defense secretary.
As happened with just about everybody in Trump’s orbit, the invisible clock had run out. Late in 2018, Trump was complaining about Mattis to friends. He told one, “Mad Dog, that’s not the perfect nickname for him because he’s not aggressive enough. He’s not assertive enough. He didn’t really earn that nickname.”
At the Pentagon that day, a young marine who often worked at the security station guarding the Potomac River entrance, which Mattis and his staff used to enter the building, threw his phone down on the pavement when he read the news that Trump was removing Mattis early.
“Marines don’t forget,” the guard said.
Marines revered Mattis, and the guard was no exception. The general had earned his reputation the slow and steady way. A bachelor who never married, the commander made it a tradition that he would volunteer to take a junior officer’s shift on Christmas Day so his subordinates could spend the holiday with their families.
Trump’s treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to arrange the biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all departing secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched for a mile applauding Mattis as he left the Pentagon for the last time as secretary. It was going to be “yuge,” staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.
But Mattis would not allow it.
“No, we are not doing that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I work with him. You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan and Dunford.”
On his last day, New Year’s Eve, Mattis left the Pentagon without public fanfare. He was hoping to protect the men he left behind, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. He did record an audio farewell message to Defense Department employees, which he began by quoting from a telegram President Lincoln sent to General Ulysses Grant in 1865: “Let nothing which is transpiring, change, hinder, or delay your military movements, or plans.”