US Defence Secretary James Mattis has resigned, saying the President needs a leader at the Pentagon whose views are "better aligned" with his own.
The move comes just 24 hours after he President Trump over-ruled the General and ordered a complete withdrawal of US forces from Syria.
James Mattis had served as Defense Secretary from the outset of the Trump administration, and is widely viewed in Washington as one of the last remaining voices of restraint and caution within the President's inner circle.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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Washington under President Donald Trump is no stranger to unexpected breaking news.
But the news of General James Mattis' resignation as the President's Defense Secretary has shocked the city to its marrow.
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But that Presidential Tweet like so many others before it was deliberately misleading.
General Mattis wasn't quietly deciding to retire.
He was very publicly resigning….and doing so in a furious letter delivered to the Oval Office after the General made one final, futile attempt to persuade President Trump NOT to engage in a full-scale military withdrawal from Syria.
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It is a remarkable letter.
General Mattis expresses no admiration nor personal thanks to President Trump.
He says America's allies deserve to be treated with respect….and he argues that unlike his boss, he believes in what he calls the "solidarity" of global alliances.
It is a public critique and voluble rebuke of everything President Trump's foreign policy stands for…authored by a man who has soaked up months of humiliation and finally decided he can't put up with the nonsense any more.
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That's Stephen Miller, the White House adviser from the far right of the Republican Party, indicated on CNN that the President wasn't phased by the departure from his government of a General widely viewed as the last restraining influence on Donald Trump's excesses.
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But Mr. Miller knows what we all know: that the Trump White House has suffered staff attrition unprecedented in the modern era.
And that President Trump is finding it increasingly difficult to hire staff for prominent positions, because people of competence don't trust him and definitely don't want to work for him.
On Capitol Hill, the Democrats flocked to the defense of General Mattis.
Their leader in the Senate, Charles Schumer.
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And it wasn't only the Defense Secretary's resignation that fueled a growing sense of crisis within the White House.
President Trump is determined that he will - if necessary - shut the US government down on Friday night unless Congress funds the wall he wants to build along the Mexican border….the wall he used to claim that Mexico would pay for.
Wall Street has nosedived with all the instability.
And having undercut his entire national security staff with his decision to pull out of Syria, the President is reportedly also contemplating a substantial military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Trumps are due to spend Christmas in Florida.
Other Republicans may spend the holiday wondering just how much further down President Trump's road they are willing to travel.
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