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Outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley played a key role in defending our democracy from Trump [1]
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Date: 2023-09-27
Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a self-described “teachable moment” on June 1, 2020, that made him aware of the danger posed by President Donald Trump’s willingness to politicize the military.
That’s when Milley, wearing his combat fatigues, participated in a political stunt orchestrated by Trump, who walked with other senior officials from the White House to pose with a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. The area near the church had just been forcibly cleared by police and the National Guard of Black Lives Matter demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Milley quickly realized that he had been duped by Trump into making what was in effect a visual endorsement of the president’s desire to use U.S. troops to suppress the protesters. He left the entourage before it reached the church, but Milley realized that he had to do some damage control.
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In a must-read profile of Milley, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, wrote:
For Milley, Lafayette Square was an agonizing episode; he described it later as a “road-to-Damascus moment.” The week afterward, in a commencement address to the National Defense University, he apologized to the armed forces and the country. “I should not have been there,” he said. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” His apology earned him the permanent enmity of Trump, who told him that apologies are a sign of weakness.
That moment left Milley increasingly aware of the extreme measures Trump was prepared to take to remain in power rather than engage in a peaceful transition as every previous president had done.
On Friday, a retirement ceremony for Milley will be held when his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs ends. His successor is Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., the first African American to head a specific branch of the U.S. military.
Milley’s legacy includes such momentous challenges as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and providing military support to Ukraine to fend off the Russian invaders. Before becoming the top U.S. military officer, Milley, who grew up in a working class family in the Boston area, served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, surviving several ambushes.
But perhaps his greatest service to this country came in the months before and after the November 2020 election when he helped preserve our democracy that had become increasingly fragile under Trump. Goldberg wrote:
Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office. A plain reading of the record shows that in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election, Milley did as much as, or more than, any other American to defend the constitutional order, to prevent the military from being deployed against the American people, and to forestall the eruption of wars with America’s nuclear-armed adversaries. Along the way, Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes.
And here’s what Milley’s peers told Goldberg for his profile in The Atlantic:
“For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we would have a stable person as president,” said one of Milley’s mentors, the retired three-star general James Dubik. That this assumption did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a “unique challenge” for Milley, Dubik said.
“As chairman, you swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but what if the commander in chief is undermining the Constitution?” said Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the second of Trump’s four national security advisers.
“Mark Milley had to contain the impulses of people who wanted to use the United States military in very dangerous ways,” said retired Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017-2018. “Mark had a very, very difficult reality to deal with in his first two years as chairman, and he served honorably and well. The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably.”
“General Milley has done an extraordinary job under the most extraordinary of circumstances,” said Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “I’ve worked for eight presidents, and not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon in their angriest moments would have considered doing or saying some of the things that were said between the election and January 6.”
None of these men would be considered liberals.
Of course, Trump condemned Milley showing once again what evil lurks in his heart should he end up in the White House a second time without any adults in the room with only MAGA loyalists as stand-ins. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Milley’s departure as Joint Chiefs chairman is cause for all U.S. citizens to “celebrate.” And he then went on to imply that Milley deserved the death penalty for committing a “treasonous act.”
x Trump’s reaction to the @JeffreyGoldberg profile of Mark Millley - which shows new depths of Trump’s depravity and derangement - is to imply that Milley should get the death penalty.
Trump knows exactly what he’s doing here.
https://t.co/F7V9j7DcET pic.twitter.com/wivuuZuZTr — Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 23, 2023
Other MAGA disciples have echoed Trump’s comments, including Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona who suggested that Milley should be “hung” for his Jan. 6 response. And that’s how the usurpers of our democracy would deal with a patriot who defended our democracy from Trump.
RELATED STORY: Rep. Paul Gosar says Gen. Mark Milley would be ‘hung’ in a ‘better society’
Goldberg asked Milley to describe his evolution after the June 2020 incident outside the White House. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that an enraged Trump even asked Milley about the possibility of just shooting protesters:
“You know this term teachable moment ?” he asked. “Every month thereafter I just did something publicly to continually remind the force about our responsibilities … What I’m trying to do the entire summer, all the way up to today, is keep the military out of actual politics.” He continued: “We stay out of domestic politics, period, full stop, not authorized, not permitted, illegal, immoral, unethical—we don’t do it.”
Milley said the lesson he learned was that he “had to pay more attention” and “to double down on ensuring” that the military stay clear “of any political acts or anything that could be implied as being involved in politics.” The general said he set several goals that included keeping “the U.S. out of reckless, unnecessary wars overseas” and “prevent the administration from using the military against the American people.”
Peter Chiarelli, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, told The Atlantic that as early as August 2020, Milley raised concerns that based on his observations of Trump and his advisers that it was very possible that the president would not accept an election loss. “It was unbelievable. This is August 2, and he laid out in specific detail what his concerns were between August and Inauguration Day,” Chiarelli said. “He identified one of his biggest concerns as January 6,” the day the Senate was to meet to certify the election. “It was almost like a crystal ball.”
Chiarelli said Milley was also worried that Trump would trigger a war as an “October surprise” to create a chaotic situation just before the election, such as a preemptive strike on Iran over its nuclear program.
The other concern was that Trump adviser Stephen Miller and others in the president’s inner circle were pushing to use the 1807 Insurrection Act that allows the president to deploy the military to put down domestic riots. In their 2021 book, “Peril,” Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote that Milley was so fearful that Trump might start a war that he called his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng twice—before the election and two days after the Jan. 6 insurrection—to assure him that the U.S. was not going to strike China.
Milley’s fears that Trump would not accept the outcome were realized shortly after Election Day. On Nov. 9, Trump fired Esper and named Christopher Miller to be acting secretary of defense. Miller filled some key Pentagon posts with Trump loyalists such as Kash Patel, who had been a top aide to House Intelligence Committee chairman Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California.
With Miller present, Milley gave a Veterans Day speech at the opening of the National Army Museum at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in which he emphasized that the U.S. military doesn’t take an oath to “a king or queen, a tyrant or dictator” but to protect and defend the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
According to The New Yorker, Milley warned Patel and another Trump loyalist, Ezra Cohen-Watnick against doing anything illegal to prevent Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. He reportedly told them: “If you guys do anything that’s illegal, I don’t mind having you in prison.” Both Patel and Cohen-Watnick denied receiving such a warning.
Milley also issued special instructions to the Joint Chiefs and National Military Command Center to be aware of unusual requests or demands and keep an eye on the activities of the men chosen by Trump to lead the Pentagon after Esper was sacked.
Then shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Milley to ask whether the U.S. nuclear arsenal was secure during the two weeks Trump was still in office before Biden’s Jan. 20 insurrection. According to “Peril,” Pelosi said of Trump, “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”
Milley reportedly replied: “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.” He then said, according to the authors, “I want you to know this in your heart of hearts, I can guarantee you 110 percent that the military, use of military power, whether it’s nuclear or a strike in a foreign country of any kind, we’re not going to do anything illegal or crazy.”
x An extraordinary moment in American history. A speaker of the House asks the chairman of the joint chiefs if the nuclear codes are safe because she fears the president is crazy and liable to make a deadly decision to stay in power.
From Milley's testimony re: Jan. 8, 2021 call. pic.twitter.com/Md0tKacysI — Robert Costa (@costareports) January 2, 2023
And on Inauguration Day, Milley was clearly relieved. In their book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” about Trump’s tumultuous final year in office, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, wrote that moments after Biden was sworn in Michelle Obama asked Milley how he was doing. He replied: “No one has a bigger smile today than I do. You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
Milley declined to say whether he thought Trump and his closest advisers tried to stage a civilian coup, according to Goldberg.
“I’m going to leave that to the American people to determine, and a court of law, and you’re seeing that play out every day. All I’m saying is that my duty as the senior officer of the United States military is to keep out of politics.”
Milley, a ROTC graduate from Princeton, was commissioned an officer in 1980. His 63-year military career career ends on Friday. Goldberg wrote:
Milley has told friends that he expects that if Trump returns to the White House, the newly elected president will come after him. “He’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list,” he has said. But he’s also told friends that he does not believe the country will reelect Trump. When I asked him about this, he wouldn’t answer directly, but when I asked him to describe his level of optimism about the country’s future, he said: “I have a lot of confidence in the general officer corps, and I have confidence in the American people. The United States of America is an extraordinarily resilient country, agile and flexible, and the inherent goodness of the American people is there. I’ve always believed that, and I will go to my grave believing that.”
RELATED STORY: Trump's ex-Defense secretary fears he would pursue illegitimate prosecutions of enemies if reelected
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