Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired general Mark Milley calls former President Trump a “total fascist” and the most dangerous person to the United States, according to an excerpt from Bob Woodward's upcoming book. He says he believes that.
“He's the most dangerous person ever. I had my doubts when I talked to you about his mental decline and all that, but now I know he's a complete fascist. He's the most dangerous person to this country right now,” Milley told Woodward in the previewed book, War. guardian. “He's a fascist through and through.”
Milley, who served as chairman under Presidents Trump and Biden, also fears he could be court-martialed if Trump is elected president next month. The commander-in-chief has authority over retired officers and can recall them to active duty and court-martial them.
President Trump has frequently expressed a desire to take revenge on those who spoke out against him, so such a situation is not out of the realm of possibility.
“He's a walking, talking, advertising guy for what he's going to do,” Milley warned his former colleagues, Woodward said. “He says that, but it's not just him, it's the people around him as well.”
Woodward cited Trump's former senior adviser Steve Bannon, who earlier this year laid out a list of people Trump should go after if he wins a second term. He said those include Milley, former FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former FBI Director James Comey. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Attorney General Bill Barr.
“We're going to hold him accountable,” Bannon said of Milley in his book.
Bannon is in jail for contempt of Congress.
President Trump has previously sought to recall and court-martialize retired executives who criticized him. During a meeting in the Oval Office in 2020 with Esper and Milley, who was nominated by President Trump to be his second secretary of defense, the president at the time talked about two military veterans, William McRaven and Stanley McChrystal. “Yelling,” Woodward wrote.
McRaven is a former admiral who led the U.S. Special Forces raid on Pakistan in 2011. killed Osama bin Ladenwrote an article in the Washington Post that said of Trump, “There is nothing left to stop evil from triumphing.''
McChrystal, a retired special forces general whose subordinates killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006, said: Comments on CNN He called President Trump “immoral” and “dishonest.”
Trump called Milley and Esper to the White House to urge them to care for retired staffers, but they pressed them not to seek punishment for McRaven and McChrystal.
“The president didn't want to hear that,” Woodward said, so Milley promised Trump that she would “'take care of this.'”
Milley then called McCraven and McChrystal, warning them to “retract” and “step down from the public stage.”
Mr Woodward also wrote that Mr Milley had received a “constant barrage of death threats” since he retired last year, and said Mr Milley had installed bulletproof glass and explosion-proof curtains in his home at his own expense. Ta.
Milley has frequently spoken out against Trump, sharing stories from his time on the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019 to 2023.
Milley infamously made a direct reference to Trump, who at the time was aiming to become the Republican presidential nominee, in his farewell speech.
“We do not swear an oath to kings and queens, tyrants and dictators, and we do not swear oaths to nations. i want to be a dictator” said Millie. “We don't take an oath against individuals. We take an oath to the Constitution, we take an oath to the idea of America, and we're willing to die to protect it.”
Woodward's book reveals several other bombshell statements. Among them: In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, President Trump sent a COVID-19 test machine to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use, and at least he contracted the virus. 7 phone calls With President Putin since leaving office.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
