Defense Secretary James Mattis has a way with words.
Just two weeks after submitting a scathing resignation letter after disagreeing with President Trump's withdrawal of troops from Syria, Mattis issued another, shorter letter on the last day of his tenure. In the Monday letter, he challenged former President Abraham Lincoln's message to Ulysses S. Grant just before the end of the Civil War. Mattis quoted Lincoln's orders, and similarly told defense employees to stay "undistracted" from their "mission" of protecting the Constitution.
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