Is it any wonder why the Trump administration seemed to have such a rocky start? The reason is simple. 91% of Washington D.C. residents and an overwhelming majority of those living in the counties surrounding D.C. vote Democrat. Hence, a Republican President who naively believed from his business experience that a boss was a boss and people loyally carried out his orders, instead found himself living and working in a pit of vipers, intent to destroy his presidency in any way that they could.
We know there were myriad leaks about in-fighting among the White House staff and of private phone calls between the President and world leaders. And we know that one of those phone calls, in which absolutely nothing untoward was said, was reported by one of Major Alexander Vindman as being a president threatening to withhold money if a foreign leader didn’t do as he asked. He had to admit that no threat was ever made. And even if it had been, U.S. money is often given with strings attached. Egypt’s continued peace with Israel has been paid for in American dollars, for example.
But the worst possible traitorous act against President Trump was carried out by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, as has now been revealed in a book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Bob Woodward, for those of you too young to remember, along with Carl Bernstein, broke the story about the Watergate break-in and the subsequent cover-up which doomed the Richard Nixon presidency. This man is a reporter who gets his facts right. Their book, Peril is based, they say, on 200 interviews with firsthand participants, documents, calendars, diaries, emails and meeting notes.
Let’s begin the discussion of what exactly General Milley did with an explanation of the job of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the encyclopedia Britannica “Joint Chiefs of Staff, [is a] panel of high-ranking U.S. military officers who advise the president of the United States and other civilian leaders on military issues. As an advisory body, the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not lead combat forces and have no executive or command authority over troops in their services.” So, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Milley’s only constitutional duty was to advise the president and others in the administration on military issues. He had no power to make decisions on his own or to act on his own, nor did any of the other Joint Chiefs of Staff. They have no authority over troops!
Then what exactly did Gen. Milley do? Before the election, he made a secret phone call in October to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army of China to reassure him that the U.S. would not make any moves against China, no matter what happened in the election. Neither the President of the United States nor the Secretary of Defense nor the National Security Advisor had ordered the call nor had any idea that the call had been made.
What apparently prompted this action and what was to follow? President Trump wanted to get us out of Afghanistan by the end of his presidency so he had signed a memo eight days after the November election that we should withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan by January 15, during the non-fighting winter season. The plans to do so had been carefully drawn up with contingency plans if the Taliban did not cooperate long before since the original withdrawal date was set for May. The memo, sent to the Pentagon, also advised them to inform our allies immediately of our plans.
But Trump had not first discussed this with any of the military leaders as was custom, and Gen. Milley was furious. He went to the White House to see the national security advisor who also had not been consulted about the timetable, and the national security advisor told President Trump that he needed to discuss this with all concerned parties before making such a decision. Trump agreed and was obviously talked out of a planned two-month withdrawal. Instead, we had the chaos, the loss of 13 American soldiers’ lives, the anger of our allies who had not been forewarned, and hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghani allies left behind from Biden’s blundering withdrawal. Milley shares the blood that is on Biden’s hands for that continuing fiasco!
It was at this point that Milley staged a what Woodward and Costa literally describe as a military coup, unknown to Republican lawmakers, the White House, and the American people. He called Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, who told him, “You know he [Trump] is crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.” Then he sat down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and informed them that he was taking over and that President Trump was no longer in charge. He went around the group of Joint Chiefs of Staff and made each one of them swear to obey him, regardless of any orders that might come from the White House. He also called an admiral about to conduct military maneuvers in the China Sea and told him not to do them. The admiral obeyed.
Although he claims he thought the President might “go rogue,” thus embroiling us in a war, that decision was not his to make. According to the Constitution, President Trump was still in charge, was still the Commander-in-Chief, a job that never belonged to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff! Nor did he have the constitutional power to remove the President from office. Thus he acted in secret and in a move unprecedented in American history and vastly dangerous to our Republic, to circumvent the President who was trying to get us safely OUT of a 20-year-war, not get us into another one. In fact, President Trump has been the only president in decades NOT to get us into a military conflict someplace new.
Then, the riot at the Capitol on January 6 occurred, which, while stupid, was nothing more than a riot and far less than the riots that Antifa and BLM had been carrying out throughout the previous summer, looting, burning, beating people up and murdering. The only person who died during the riot at the Capitol was an unarmed (as were all of the rioters!) female veteran, shot by a frazzled Capitol policeman. A policeman was initially reported as having been killed in the riot, but in fact simply died the next day of natural causes. But the Democrats jumped on the riot, calling it an armed insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the government — a strange concept, since President Trump was still the leader of said government and it was he whom they blamed for inciting the so-called insurrection. In fact, President Trump had been speaking to a crowd that he urged to march “peaceably” to the Capitol to make their displeasure known, but the riot was over long before any of those listening to him had time to walk to the Capitol building. Still, facts do not matter to Democrats and so Pelosi began impeachment hearings a second time and Gen. Milley made his second secret phone call to China. And this call is the most devastating. In it he apparently said:
“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Woodward and Costa claim that they have the exclusive transcripts of Milley’s call with both Pelosi and with the Chinese general!
What if General Bradley had called General Rommel, perhaps the most brilliant German general during WWII and said, “You know, when President Roosevelt gives the go ahead to invade Europe, I’ll call you ahead of time and let you know of the exact date and place. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Would we have called that treason?
When, during the American Revolution, General Benedict Arnold met with British Major John Andre to discuss turning over West Point (then a crucial military base) to the British in exchange for a large sum of money and a high position in the British army, we did call it treason. And his name has become a by-word for someone who betrays another.
By his actions, Milley also committed treason. He would have put American troops in harms’ way by warning communist China of any military move we might have made before the country was “safely” in the hands of the man, who has been, according to Obama’s National Defense Secretary, wrong about every foreign policy issue in four decades.
Why did Milley turn on his Commander-In Chief? Why did he in effect create a military dictatorship with himself as the unknown, unseen commander from the election to the end of President Trump’s term in office? Why did he circumvent the Constitution which deliberately places civilians in charge of top military decisions?
Most likely for two reasons, neither of which is excusable: First, because he, like many others in D.C. didn’t like President Trump because he was an outsider and did things his own way, a way, in fact, which proved excellent for the country at home and abroad. And secondly, because by ingratiating himself with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, he could be assured of keeping his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Retired Col. Alexander Vindman who himself does not like President Trump and was at the heart of Trump’s first sham impeachment tweeted, “If this is true Gen. Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke the Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that.”
But you can. If you are a Democrat!