In a new book Peril out from Bob Woodward and the Washington Post‘s Robert Costa, it is revealed that Joint Chief’s Chairman General Mark Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that if the US were to attack China, Milley would let Li know before it happened.
A coup d’état (French for “blow of state”) is the seizure and typically, it is an illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power by a political faction, the military, or a dictator, so if what Woodward writes is true, what to you call what happened in January 2021?
Milley was apparently afraid that President Trump would engage in hostilities and went around Trump in order to take power, by speaking with Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army. Milley assured him that the US would not engage in armed hostilities with the communist nation, according to the Washington Post. The book comes out next week.
A debate about what Milley did or didn’t do during the final days of Trump’s presidency was not what Milley’s allies had planned for his scheduled Sept. 28 appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
- They’d seen it as an opportunity to set the record straight on the chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan.
- Since Afghanistan fell immediately to the Taliban after President Biden ignored Milley’s advice to keep in several thousand troops, Milley’s friends and allies have wanted him to have the chance to tell his side of the story.
- They thought doing so through a media appearance might be seen as inappropriate, and that given the gravity of the situation it would be best for him to say his piece under oath in a congressional setting.
- Milley allies were especially agitated by the White House saying he’d supported shutting down the air base at Bagram — a decision Milley felt compelled to make because of Biden’s orders to remove all troops from Afghanistan against his recommendations.
Those wishful plans for Milley’s hearing are out the window. Questioning during the Sept. 28 hearing will likely focus more on the chairman’s behind-the-scenes actions during the final days of Trump.
BREAKING: At least one of Milley’s calls to China was intercepted by a partner nation targeting PRC leadership and resulted in a FVEY rocket of “WTF” to Meade and Bolling, per IC official. If the Woodward accounts are true, Milley should be relieved of command and face charges. So we have yet to see a single CNN/MSNBC commentator criticize Milley for reportedly telling China he’d tip them off in the case of an attack — these are the same networks that spent the entirety of the Trump era fretting “Trump is a Russian agent!” “He’s a lawless dictator!”
Beyond the obvious subversion of the President, that Milley would be willing to put his troops in a situation where the enemy would know where and when to kill them is unthinkable. But then I guess after Afghanistan, that shouldn’t be in question.
CNN’s Camerota in an interview, expected Rep. Garamendi to criticize Milley and was surprised when he didn’t. As the day progressed, the usual talking heads became increasingly assertive that actually, Milley was on point because Trump is “insane”. What?
So basically, the Deep State does exist and we should be grateful for it–otherwise, we’d be tied to the Constitution’s stodgy chain-of-command, which in this case means our enemy Donald Trump calling the shots, which as everyone knows is just a completely unacceptable alternative. These people don’t even pretend to have principles. Otherwise, they’d feel inclined to preface their remarks with something like, “Look, here’s why I’m about to do a 180 on everything I’ve been saying for the last 4 years …”.
Two calls were made. The first call was made by Milley on October 30, 2020, and the second was on January 8, 2021. In October, Milley believed that the US was considering and preparing for a military attack. Milley said “General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
Milley leaned on his longstanding relationship with Li, saying “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.”
It was revealed additionally that the Joint Chiefs of Staff enacted a “top-secret action” to prevent President Donald Trump from performing his job as Commander-in-chief.
It was Trump’s military advisory General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who allegedly “was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election.” Milley’s resignation has been called for by at least 90 retired generals.
Milley, reportedly said, that Trump was “all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.”
As such, the authors state, “Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world.”
Milley is reported to have called a “secret meeting” at the Pentagon on January 8, in the wake of the Capitol riot that left one Trump supporter, Ashli Babbit, dead at the hands of police, and told staff that unless he was involved, they were not to take orders from anyone.
“No matter what you are told,” Milley said, directly undermining presidential authority, “you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure.” He sought visual confirmation from each person at that meeting before proceeding, and asked “Got it?”
Milley made the call, worried that Trump could “go rogue,” according to Woodward and Costa, only two days after the Capitol riot on January 6. “You never know what a president’s trigger point it,” Milley reportedly told his senior staff.
Milley additionally had a private phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during which the two agreed that Trump was “crazy.” This recount is based on a transcript of the call.
According to that transcript, per Woodward and Costa, Milley used that call to assure Pelosi as to the security of the US nuclear arsenal.
“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?” Pelosi said, going on to say, “You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”
Milley agreed fully, saying “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.”
It was after this phone call that Milley began to take power into his own hands. He told his top staff, as well as the director of the National SecurityAgency and the CIA director, Gina Haspel, to watch everything “all the time.”
Milley believed, according to the authors, that he was acting in the best interests of the American people by taking this power away from the presidency, secretly, and wielding it for his own ends.
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