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Consequence of having an acting secretary in there versus a confirmed secretary? obviously we're seeing the trump administration act in ways that are, you know, concerning to a lot of people on venezuela, certainly right now on iran, there's been lots of confusion in terms of whether or not the president ultimately did give an order that u.s. troops should leave syria or not and what happened to that order. ever since james mattis left there's been no clear indication about how the administration handles matters involving civilian control of the military anyway. what have we seen that tells us...

There's been no clear indication about how the administration handles matters involving civilian control of the military anyway. what have we seen that tells us about the difference of having somebody in there who is not confirmed? >> so mattis was a commanding presence, and while he lost the faith of the president at the end, he was someone that the white house listened to. the problem is two-fold. one, when you're in an acting capacity, everyone wonders whether you're going to be there for the long haul so your influence and naturally diluted. two, this particular acting secretary had absolu...

First about how you see mattis's departure. >> well, i have never seen in 40 years of being in government service, anything approaching the chaos we have in our government now, both in the national security arena, but across the government in our process and so forth. if you you are a foreign observer looking at the united states you're going to say to yourself, there's no principles, there's no policy, there's no process. we don't know where you stand. so mattis's departure takes trump's foreign pl sy to a crossroads here. it's a matter of pulling back american troops and abandoning allies th...

One veteran told me he was devastated. >> that's what i'm hearing, too. this is a concerning, fragile moment in american history, especially for our military and veterans community. secretary mattis is on another level. i have never seen a more popular leader among the modern military, period. he's more popular george washington. a recent poll said he had over 80% approval rating, close to 90%. so mattis is another world in terms of his trust and reverence within the military. this is reverberating around the active duty and veterans community. >> and in terms of the actual policy decisions th...

Really wants to go into the policy differences that he has with mattis at this point. and then does he want to go through a confirmation hearing about the policy differences that he had with someone else? so i think this is a mess and he just tries to pressure people into leaving, and that's not going to happen with this guy. >> so mattis said -- take a listen to this interview of lesley stahl trying to talk about mattis when mattis tried to explain to president trump why nato was important. >> is it true general mattis said to you, the reason for nato, and the reason for all these alliances i...