2016 General Mattis rules out presidential bid to stop Trump, Clinton

[WeekiWater]

Retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis won't be on the presidential ballot this fall.

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the retired Marine four-star sent an email to associates ruling out any chance of a third-party presidential run.

The paper reported that Mattis met with political strategists to listen to pitches during a Washington, D.C. visit earlier this month, but dismissed taking further steps. Shortly before the meeting, during a think tank speech on April 22, Mattis said he hadn’t given the idea of a presidential bid any thought.

Joel Searby, who had helped lay the groundwork for a potential Mattis campaign, told the Times that the 65-year-old former head of U.S. Central Command made clear in his email to supporters that he "decided definitively not to pursue a run for president."

Military Times

Interesting. From 2016.

[lapucelle]

1. Why would Mattis have wanted to stop HRC?

This is garbage-y false equivalence circa 2016. No wonder Mattis nixed the idea.

[JI7]

2. not Mattis himself but the idiot's trying to get him to run

[WeekiWater]

3. The people wanting him to run.

At some point I recall he actually said he thought he was going to be tapped by Clinton, not Trump.

[RHMerriman]

4. Headline is completely misleading; any such effort in 2016 would have been

Headline is completely misleading; any such effort in 2016 was going to be designed to attract votes from DJT and give Republicans a place to go, not take on HRC.

Like almost everyone else who had not been read in on the fact that hostile foreign actors were in league with the GOP generally and DJT especially, the situation was misread.

Reality is that is Mattis had run a third-party, or even a last-minute GOP candidacy, the beneficiary would have been HRC, and she'd be president today.