Former President Donald Trump floated the idea of trying Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for treason in a scathing statement released after it was reported the general had secretly contacted the Chinese military after taking actions to undermine Trump during his time in office.
Milley, per a new book from Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa called “Peril,” placed two secret phone calls to People’s Liberation Army Gen. Li Zuocheng before Trump left office.
Woodward and Costa allege that Milley also held a secret meeting with other high-ranking military officials where he organized an effort to block Trump from using nuclear weapons — should such a drastic measure have been necessary.
After allegedly colluding to subvert democracy, he then reportedly called Zuocheng before the 2020 election on Oct. 30 to assure his Chinese counterpart he would keep him updated about U.S. military plans.
He then reportedly called Zuocheng again on Jan. 8 — 12 days before Trump left office.
With all the talk of “insurrection” throughout this year following the brief Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, it appears as though the only real attempt to seize power from civilian leadership before and after the election came from Milley — if what Woodward and Costa say is true.
Milley has not denied making the phone calls.
After hearing the earth-shattering news that one of his former generals had reportedly committed what many legal scholars might call treason, Trump unleashed on Milley in a statement on Tuesday.
“If the story of ‘Dumb***’ General Mark Milley, the same failed leader who engineered the worst withdrawal from a country, Afghanistan, in U.S. history, leaving behind many dead and wounded soldiers, many American citizens, and $85 Billion worth of the newest and most sophisticated Military equipment in the world, and our Country’s reputation, is true, then I assume he would be tried for TREASON in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the President’s back and telling China that he would be giving them notification ‘of an attack.’ Can’t do that!” Trump stated.
Trump concluded the story was false.
“The good news is that the story is Fake News concocted by a weak and ineffective General together with two authors who I refused to give an interview to because they write fiction, not fact,” he continued. “Actions should be taken immediately against Milley, and better generals in our Military, of which we have many, should get involved so that another Afghanistan disaster never happens again.
“Remember, I was the one who took out 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. Milley said it couldn’t be done!”
The former president clarified that the country was never in any danger of war with China.
“For the record, I never even thought of attacking China — and China knows that. The people that fabricated the story are sick and demented, and the people who print it are just as bad,” Trump said. “In fact, I’m the only President in decades who didn’t get the U.S. into a war — a well known fact that is seldom reported.”
With Trump’s statement of the record, you’d have to assume that had there been any military action taken by the Chinese last year or earlier this year, blood would have been on Milley’s hands. Milley has of course already been under fire now for a month over his failings regarding the U.S. military’s surrender of Kabul to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The “woke” general also found himself on many radars this summer when he admitted while testifying before Congress that he is well-read in Marxist literature and that he’s concerned about understanding “white rage.”
Naturally, many on the left are attacking Trump over outrage regarding Milley, pointing out that in 2018, the former president actually appointed him to his current position.
In defense of Trump, it isn’t likely that many people — an outsider president included — understood just how far the rot in our country’s institutions had gone by 2017 — when Trump took office and trusted those around him, as he should have been able to.
Apparently, the best our military leadership has to offer are people such as Milley. Surely, there are fine people who are qualified to lead our men and women in uniform, but it appears as though they are passed over in favor of people like Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
We’ve completely lost control of our military leadership. The fact that Milley reportedly went rogue, and the speed at which Pentagon embraced critical race theory when President Joe Biden took office in January, both point to the conclusion that our country and its military are for the moment rudderless.
We don’t even know for sure who is in control at the White House.