https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/
No paywall, at least if you only read occasionally, but maybe none at
all.
I thought this would repeat in detail what I heard on the radio today,
but I guess that came from a different source.
"For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we
would have a stable person as president,” one of Milley’s mentors, the
retired three-star general James Dubik, told me. That this assumption
did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a “unique challenge” for Milley, Dubik said.
In The Divider, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser write that Milley believed
that Trump was “shameful,” and “complicit” in the January 6 attack. They
also reported that Milley feared that Trump’s “ ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of
the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ”
Kash Patel, whom Trump installed in a senior Pentagon role in the final
days of his administration, refers to Milley as “the Kraken of the
swamp.” Trump himself has accused Milley of treason. Sebastian Gorka, a
former Trump White House official, has said that Milley deserves to be
placed in “shackles and leg irons.”
-- Could Patel or Gorka actually believe these things, or are they
just hoping to benefit from trump.
“Trump picked him as chief because he looks like what Trump thinks a
general should look like.” But Trump misjudged him, King said. “He
thought he would be loyal to him and not to the Constitution.” Trump had
been led to believe that Milley would be more malleable than other
generals.
The week afterward, in a commencement address to the National Defense University, he apologized to the armed forces and the country [for
walking with trump through Lafayette Square after demonstrators there
had been removed by force, just so trump could show he was willing to do
that. Milley and Esper didn't see what was happening to them at
first.]. “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.
The former president’s ignorance of nuclear doctrine had been apparent
well before his exchanges with Kim Jong Un. In a 2015
Republican-primary debate, Trump was asked, “Of the three legs of the
triad … do you have a priority?” Trump’s answer: “I think—I think, for
me, nuclear is just—the power, the devastation is very important to me.”
Shortly after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, Pelosi, who was
then the speaker of the House, called Milley to ask if the nation’s
nuclear weapons were secure. “He’s crazy,” she said of Trump. “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.” According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa,
who recounted this conversation in their book, Peril, Milley 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.”
More v. interesting stuff at this article
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