A rumor that circulated online in June 2025 claimed former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, released a statement condemning President Donald Trump for his actions during ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles.
The statement, titled "In Union There Is Strength," began, "I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled." It praised protesters for uniting and "unifying," and expressed opposition to Trump's call for deploying military force against people exercising their right to make their voices heard.
For example, on June 10, the manager of a Facebook page posted (archived), "Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis has released a statement about Trump's military coup." The post, displaying the statement and a photo of Mattis, received over 103,000 reactions and 59,000 shares in less than 24 hours. Other (archived) users (archived) copied and pasted similar text alongside pictures of Mattis on (archived) Bluesky, Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived). Snopes readers also emailed to ask about the matter, for example, with one person inquiring, "Is the recent statement from General Mattis about unifying true or false?"
(Feminist News/Facebook)
Mattis truly authored the statement that condemned Trump's response to protesters, but he published it in June 2020 — not June 2025 — and was referring to Trump's actions regarding protests over the death of George Floyd. Floyd, a Black man, died on May 25, 2020, while in the custody of white police officers in Minneapolis.
At the time, Trump threatened to deploy military force to combat violent protests if state and local officials declined to make use of active-duty troops. One particularly striking moment concerned the use of tear gas and flash-bangs against a largely peaceful gathering in Washington, after which Trump walked from the White House to St. John's Church, where he held up a Bible and posed for photos.
Some (archived) users (archived) who posted in 2025 acknowledged Mattis' statement was five years old but argued it still applied to the more recent events, namely the Trump administration's deployment of more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to provide security at immigration protests and operations in Los Angeles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass both opposed the federal intervention. As of this writing, The Associated Press reported the usage of about 2,000 of the National Guard troops in L.A., while Marines resided at a nearby base.
Snopes contacted Mattis by email to ask if he wished to comment on the immigration protests in L.A., and whether he believed his June 2020 statement was relevant to the events taking place in June 2025. We will update this story if we learn more.
Mattis' full statement from June 2020
The Atlantic (archived), The New York Times (archived) and NPR (archived) host the full text of Mattis' "In Union There Is Strength." His statement from June 2020 reads:
IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH
I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a "battlespace" that our uniformed military is called upon to "dominate." At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat." We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The Nazi slogan for destroying us ... was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's "better angels," and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path — which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals — will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
For further reading, Snopes reported the facts about Trump's deployment of military force for the June 2025 LA protests.