Furious Donald Trump lashes out at Jim Mattis for saying 'America First' needs to be ditched from national security policy and says 'I should have fired him sooner' even though Marine quit first

 President Donald Trump attacked his former Defense Secretary James Mattis after Mattis torched his own administration's 'America First' policy and urged Joe Biden's team to get rid of it.

Trump tweeting against the retired Marine general just hours after he came close to conceding the election by allowing saying he instructed the General Services Agency to begin a transition – setting in place procedures that ultimately will put Joe Biden's administration in place to begin carving out its own foreign policy.

The president tweeted out a Fox News article about Mattis' denunciation of the Trump administration's policy calling card, even after repeatedly attacking the network over its coverage and polls. 

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Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis helped pen an article arguing that 'America First' is 'America Alone'

'That says it all about Mattis. Obama fired him. I should have fired him sooner. Did best work after he was gone. World's most overrated general!' Trump wrote.

Mattis resigned in December 2018 after a clash over suddenly pulling U.S. troops out of Syria. 

'Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,' Mattis wrote Trump in his resignation letter.

Trump rolled out the 'overrated' attack soon afterward. 

Mattis' words in a new Foreign Policy magazine article, penned along with Kori Schake, Jim Ellis and Joe Felter, spelled out those differences. 

Trump blasted former Defense Secretary James Mattis following reports on his article in Foreign Affairs. He claimed he fired him, although Mattis resigned

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Mattis resigned in 2018 saying Trump should have a Pentagon chief whose views 'aligned' with his own

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Mattis notably praised U.S. military servicemen and women at cabinet meetings when other cabinet heads would heap praise on Trump

 The article called for restoring U.S. alliances and U.S. 'soft power' to influence the globe and U.S. interests and values.

'The United States today is undermining the foundations of an international order manifestly advantageous to U.S. interests, reflecting a basic ignorance of the extent to which both robust alliances and international institutions provide vital strategic depth,' they wrote. 

'In practice, 'America first' has meant 'America alone.' That has damaged the country's ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.' 

The Mattis article contains broad statements that might have seemed unremarkable before Trump came into office and blasted NATO allies for falling behind on what he called 'dues,' got in a trade war with China, and announced a decision to leave the World Health Organization. Trump is also directing the Pentagon to pull more U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan in his final weeks in office.

'Enhancing national security must start with the fundamental truth that the United States cannot protect itself or its interests without the help of others,' according to Mattis and company. 'International engagement allows the United States to see and act at a distance, as threats are gathering, rather than waiting for them to assume proportions that ultimately make them much costlier and more dangerous to defeat.'

The article ends with a blunt suggestion that Biden repudiate the policy that Trump ran on in 2016.

'In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate 'America first' from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades.'