Fmr Pentagon chief mocks Trump's insult, says, 'I'm Meryl Streep...'

After Donald Trump called the former Pentagon chief  James Mattis an "overrated" general, he retaliation compared himself to Meryl Streep, laughing off the US President's insult. 

"I'm not just an overrated general. I’m the most overrated general," the Pentagon chief said. 

Further added, "I’m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess, I’m the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me. And you do have to admit that between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.”

Trump lashed out at his former defense secretary Wednesday, during a contentious White House meeting with members of Congress.

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The meeting was intended to be a bipartisan discussion of Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces from northern Syria, but it broke up after a testy exchange between Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Before the walkout, Trump disparaged Mattis, who had argued as defense secretary that U.S. troops were needed in Syria to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State fighters. Trump said Mattis was “the world’s most overrated general. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough.” “I captured ISIS,” Trump went on to say.

Mattis had resigned as the Defence Secretary in February this year, over a disagreement with Donald Trump to pull 2,000 US troops out of Syria.  In his resignation letter, the retired Marine general told Trump he had “the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.” However, in October, Donald Trump abruptly withdrew troops from the north-east Syrian border, leaving US' Kurdish allies stranded to fight the Turkey military and ISIS. 

Hundreds of ISIS backers escaped a holding camp amid clashes between invading Turkish-led forces and Kurdish fighters, and analysts said an ISIS resurgence seemed more likely, just months after Trump declared the so-called Islamic State defeated.

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Former Pentagon chief on Pakistan 

Mattis, the former US Defence Secretary labeled Pakistan as the most dangerous country that he dealt with in his long spanning Pentagon career, citing the level of radicalization of its society and nuclear weapons “falling into the hands of terrorists breeding in their midst.”

Through his autobiography ‘Call Sign Chaos’ that hits the stand on Tuesday, the former US Defence Secretary said, “Off all the countries I’ve dealt with, I consider Pakistan to be the most dangerous, because of the radicalization of the society and the availability of nuclear weapons.”

Affirming the breeding of terrorists amid the Pakistani leadership, James Mattis said, “We can’t have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world falling into the hands of the terrorists breeding in their midst. The result would be disastrous."

(With AP inputs) 

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