SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Palm Center director Aaron Belkin released the following statement todayreacting to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s stated concern about America’s “internal divisiveness”:

“Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will be remembered not for combating divisiveness but for sowing it through the policy banning transgender military service that bears his name.

 Mattis claims his biggest concern about America todayis ‘internal divisiveness…fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future.’ Yet Mattis’s willingness to divide his own military force by cowing to Donald Trump’s call to ban transgender troops from service makes this claim the height of hypocrisy.

 The Pentagon report on the subject that Mattis oversaw and signed was based on falsehoods and distortions that provoked the condemnation of the American Medical Association and a panel of former military Surgeons General who noted that it ‘mischaracterized the medical research that sustains’ its recommendation for a ban.

 This report and the transgender ban will forever tarnish Mattis’s name.”