Pentagon chief balks at Trump’s call for active-duty military force on U.S. citizens, and Mattis rips president

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper distanced himself from President Trump on Wednesday, saying the use of active-duty forces to quash unrest across the nation is unnecessary at this stage, hours before his predecessor, Jim Mattis, excoriated the president for working to divide the country.

The comments captured the extraordinary tension that has been building among current and former Pentagon officials since Monday, when Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to use active-duty troops in U.S. cities and Esper referred to American cities as a “battlespace.”