WASHINGTON �� President Donald Trump hinted that Defense Secretary James Mattis may be planning to quit his administration, and described the former U.S. Marine Corps general as "sort of a Democrat."
In an excerpt from CBS' "60 Minutes, Trump talked about the level of turnover in his administration after almost two years, and suggested that there could be more.
"There are some people that I'm not happy with. I have some people that I'm not thrilled with. And I have other people that I'm beyond thrilled with," Trump said.
Mattis "hasn't told me" that he plans to leave, Trump said, and didn't directly answer the question of whether he'd like the Pentagon chief to quit.
"I had lunch with him two days ago. I have a very good relationship with him. It could be that he is. I think he's sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth," Trump said. "He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That's Washington."
Mattis was one of Trump's first Cabinet picks after the 2016 election. He was long seen as a force for stability in foreign policy in an administration that has had to manage crises from North Korea to Syria under a president who prides himself on his unpredictability.
But Mattis has been on the defensive after excerpts from author Bob Woodward's book "Fear" depicted the publicly taciturn military man as being critical of Trump in private.
