After an incident where the personal phone number of Secretary of Defense James Mattis was leaked to the public, a high school student in Washington state took the chance to call the secretary, the Hill reports.
The photo, posted in a May article in the Washington Post, piqued the interest of Mercer Island student Teddy Fischer, who proceeded to text Secretary Mattis about the possibility of conducting a foreign policy interview.
To Fischer’s surprise, Mattis agreed to the request and spoke with the high schooler for around 45 minutes about foreign policy, national politics and other topics specifically regarding teenagers.
“So, I’ve always tried to help students because I think we owe it to you young folks to pass on what we learned going down the road,” Mattis said, “so that you can make your own mistakes, not the same ones we made.”
While not a hard-hitting, policy-based interview, Fischer pressed Mattis on the differences between the Trump and Obama administrations in the Middle East and the U.S. role in areas where ISIS has been defeated.
“[President Obama] unfortunately didn’t always have the best advisors,” Mattis said during the interview, “so we missed some opportunities there.”