Trump does his best to ridicule Jim Mattis

President Trump demands the loyalty of everyone around him. And his method of obtaining it is often unorthodox: by forcing people to sign – or even vouch for – his most controversial and absurd ideas. People in its orbit almost always do it, to one degree or another, because the alternative is to undermine the president of the United States. Once they've bought, their fate is more tied to hers.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has so far largely avoided such an arrangement. By rarely expressing himself in public, he's carved out a reputation for bipartisan stabilizing force within the administration. And with the imminent arrival of Nikki Haley as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, he is about to be the most popular and well-known cabinet minister.

But Mattis's tolerance is now put to the test, as is her reputation.

Earlier this week, Mattis pleaded for Trump's decision to send 5,200 troops to the US-Mexico border to deal with the migrant caravan that began in Honduras. Critics have claimed that it was a thinly veiled electoral scheme in which the Pentagon is now complicit, but Mattis rejected this criticism in unambiguous terms.

"The support we provide to the Secretary of Homeland Security is concrete support, based on the request of the Commissioner of Customs and Border Police," said Mattis. "So, we do not do stunts in this department."

"We do not do stunts in this department." Translation: We do not allow Trump to use us for political purposes.

Since Mattis said those words on Wednesday, Trump has increased the bet even further. A few hours later, Trump launched the idea of ​​sending up to 15,000 troops to the border – a number that would far exceed the number of migrants in the caravan and rival the number of soldiers in Afghanistan.

Then Thursday, Trump suggested that these troops react to any stone projection by shooting at the caravan. "If they want to throw stones at our military, our military will defend itself," Trump said. "We will examine – and I told them, consider this a rifle. When they throw stones as they did to the Mexican army and police, I tell them that it's a rifle. "

Trump's suggestion is not serious. Even if the armed forces wanted to deal with such provocations with lethal force and were not afraid of creating an international incident, they generally do not have the power to engage in law enforcement operations – and again less fighting – on American soil. Its role, legally speaking, is to support existing agents. It is not technically possible to do much with the National Guard, which was previously designated for deployment.

This is largely why this is perceived as a waterfall; the other main ones being that the army is deployed with the caravan at 900 miles and a few weeks and that these caravans generally have the purpose of legally seeking asylum rather than crossing the border illegally. Trump's rhetoric that this is an immigration "invasion" or "crisis" is simply not supported by the facts.

Trump's over-zealous rhetoric clearly showed, at the very least, that he was trying to exploit that for political ends. If the deployment of the army itself is an unjustified element of this effort, it is necessary to dispel a disagreement between reasonable people.

But Mattis has now accepted the idea that this is not the case. And Trump seems to want to make him regret.