U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday he had no reservations or concerns about President Donald Trump‘s incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, a hawk who has advocated using military force against North Korea and Iran.Amid speculation the two men will clash on a host of major national issues, Mattis said he would meet Bolton for the first time later this week at the Pentagon with the goal of forging a partnership.“We’re going to sit down together (this week), and I look forward to working with him. No reservations. No concerns at all,” Mattis told a group of reporters at an impromptu briefing.
The moves within a small group of just a handful of advisers have raised questions about whether Mattis could find himself increasingly isolated in his views and outmaneuvered by Bolton, an inveterate bureaucratic infighter whose 2007 memoir is titled: “Surrender Is Not An Option.”Mattis had forged a close relationship with both McMaster and Tillerson as he successfully advocated to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan and strengthen ties with NATO, despite Trump‘s skepticism about both the 16-year-old war and the trans-Atlantic alliance supporting it.Warning about the horrors of a war on the Korean peninsula, Mattis has also promoted a diplomatically-led strategy to pressure North Korea over its efforts to build a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States.WATCH: Dana Carvey spoofs ‘lunatic’ John Bolton on Stephen Colbert
(Additional reporting by John Walcott, Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chris Reese)
“Last time I checked, he’s an American and I can work with an American. Okay? I’m not the least bit concerned with that sort of thing.”Trump has shaken up his core national security team in the past two weeks, replacing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and firing Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state.WATCH: John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster as Trump’s national security adviser