Trump and his new chief of staff share Christmas bad grace

There's nothing like a bit of Christmas cheer for everyone. But this year two people have shown about as much grace as the head of New York's mafia godfather. First of all is Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America. His most loyal, trustworthy, experienced, work-devoted defence secretary Jim Mattis was basically given the boot. Ok, Mattis resigned after very sensibly deciding he could no longer work for a president who completely ignored his advice. But after Trump agreed with Mattis that he should leave in February to give him enough time to find a suitable replacement, the president had second thoughts. He decided he didn't like the tone or implied tone of Mattis's resignation letter and as a result ordered him out of the Pentagon forthwith, and announced his successor - Mattis's deputy - would start on January 1. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that Mattis was frogmarched out of the Pentagon accompanied by security people. And, of course his security clearance will probably be cancelled. So the poor general who had served his country and put his life at risk on numerous occasions and had worked all hours to keep the president of the United States from behaving recklessly (failing unfortunately), was out out out! Go away, Trump basically said. Bad grace taken to its worst degree. Then along comes Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, to add his bit of bad grace. A highly distinguished official, Brett McGurk, who as special envoy to the US-led coalition fighting Isis in Syria, had toiled for more than three years, first as Obama's appointee and then retained by Trump, also resigned. He is a good guy. Everyone liked him and he kept the coalition of 60 countries going in the right direction. He resigned after Mattis because he, too, thought Trump's decision to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria was wrong and undermined everything he had been trying to do. Trump stepped in and said the resignation of McGurk was unimportant, but Mulvaney went one big step further in the bad grace department. He said he had never heard of Brett McGurk or his job. I suppose he thought it was clever to say that but it was totally insulting to McGurk and all the good work he had achieved and it showed the new White House chief of staff to be an ignorant, disrespectful idiot. There are other words I could have chosen but it's Christmas. Happy Christmas to everyone.