“I earned my spurs on the battlefield,” he said at a charity gala in New York on Thursday night. “Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor.”
Ten months after Mattis resigned in protest, Trump described his former secretary of defense as “the world’s most overrated general” and “not tough enough” during a meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday afternoon.
In a speech disguised as self-deprecating comedy at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, the retired four-star Marine general made light of this. “I’m not just an overrated general. I am the greatest, the world’s most overrated,” he quipped. “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. … You do have to admit: Between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.”