U.S. President Donald Trump and Gen. Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, speak at the 119th Army-Navy football video game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 8, 2018.
Jim Young | Reuters
Top-ranking Army Gen. Mark Milley feared in the wake of the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump or his allies may try a military coup to remain in power, according to a brand-new book from 2 Pulitzer Prize-winning press reporters.
Trump on Thursday rejected talking about staging a coup to remain in power – however included that if he were to stage a coup, he would not wish to do it with Milley.
Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, started informally planning in the last months of Trump’s one term in workplace about how to defend against such an effort by Trump or those around him, according to “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” which comes out next week.
But Trump, in a prolonged, insult-laden declaration blasting Milley over a range of complaints, stated he “never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government.”
“If I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley,” Trump stated in the declaration, which was sent out through his political action committee.
Trump blasted Milley for saying sorry after taking part in the president’s June 2020 photo-op at St. John’s Church in Washington, which was preceded by cops powerfully clearing protesters in Lafayette Square.
“I saw at that moment he had no courage or skill, certainly not the type of person I would be talking ‘coup’ with,” Trump’s declaration stated, prior to including, “I’m not into coups!”
A representative for the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not right away react to CNBC’s ask for remark.
The book from Washington Post press reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker depicts Milley seeing himself in the last months of Trump’s presidency as one of the couple of staying authorities in the falling apart administration still protecting military and executive-branch organizations.
“They may try, but they’re not going to f—— succeed,” Milley stated of a possible federal government takeover in discussion with his closest deputies, according to the book.
“You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns,” he stated.
The basic, having actually listened to Trump spread out a variety of unwarranted conspiracy theories and incorrect claims of scams throughout the last weeks of his term, had actually drawn parallels with the increase of nazism in 20th century Germany, the book stated.
“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley informed assistants in early January, according to the book. “The gospel of the Fuhrer.”
The reporters state the book is based upon numerous hours of interviews with more than 140 sources, the majority of whom accepted speak openly on the condition of privacy. The authors state they likewise spoke with Trump on the record for 2½ hours.
Leonnig and Rucker explain Milley as being shaken after a Nov. 10 call with an old buddy, who alerted him, “What they’re trying to do here is overturn the government.”
“This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff,” the buddy informed Milley, who later on shared the exchange with his assistants, the book states.
Milley then connected to previous Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s nationwide security consultant from 2017 to 2018. “What the f— am I dealing with?” Milley asked, according to the book.
“You’re dealing with some of the weirdest s— ever,” McMaster apparently responded.
Trump declined to yield the 2020 race to now-President Joe Biden. He wrongly attempted to declare triumph on Nov. 4, even as vote tallies were still gathering. In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies submitted lots of suits to attempt to reverse the result of the race.
While Trump and his surrogates vocally asserted that extensive scams had actually rigged the election, few of the suits tried to make that argument to a real judge. None of the suits was successful in reversing Biden’s win in essential states.
Trump’s defiance, integrated with the late-hour setup of followers at leading functions in the federal government, had leading Pentagon authorities worried that the president might be convinced to take “rash military action,” the book states. The Pentagon brass contemplated actions “such as launching a missile strike, withdrawing U.S. forces precipitously from Afghanistan, or even deploying troops in some way related to the election dispute,” according to the book.
Ahead of Jan. 6, when a joint session of Congress was set up to verify Biden’s triumph, Milley apparently revealed issue about how Trump was promoting a project rally-style occasion close by.
“Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military,” the book states.
On Jan. 6, a mob of Trump’s fans, a lot of whom had actually collected for the president’s intense speech outside the White House, attacked the Capitol, vandalizing the halls of federal government and requiring a joint session of Congress into hiding.
After the fatal intrusion, Milley worried that “come hell or high water, there will be a peaceful transfer of power on January twentieth,” one senior authorities stated in the book. “We’ve got an aircraft, our landing gear is stuck, we’ve got one engine, and we’re out of fuel. We’ve got to land this bad boy.”
Milley, leading a Jan. 14 military drill in advance of Biden’s inauguration, apparently stated, “Here’s the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they’re Boogaloo Boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II.”
“Everyone in this room, whether you’re a cop, whether you’re a soldier, we’re going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in,” Milley stated, according to the book.
