Another new book concerning the last days of Donald Trump illustrates how the US Military Chiefs of Staff were preparing for an expected coup attempt or other dangerous act from Trump in his 11th hour.
Politics
In their book “I Alone Can Fix It,” Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker detail how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and the other military chiefs were so certain that Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or some other illegal act following the November election, that they created Plans A, B, C, and D to stop Trump from any effort to dismantle democracy.
Their main plan? If Trump ordered the military chiefs to carry out any action they considered to be illegal, dangerous, or ill-advised, Milley and the other military brass were prepared to resign one by one rather than succumb to a dictator and effectively kill nearly 245 years of democracy.
“It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse,” Leonnig and Rucker wrote.
During November’s pro-Trump “Million MAGA March” to protest the election results, Milley told aides he feared it “could be the modern American equivalent of ‘brownshirts in the streets,'” referring to the pro-Nazi militia that fueled Hitler’s rise to power.
For the remainder of 2020 and the weeks leading up to the Biden inauguration, tensions flared, Trump became more unhinged, and the military generals met to construct a collective strategy.
Gen. Milley grew increasingly concerned with several personnel moves that put Trump’s minions in positions of power at the Pentagon following the November 2020 election. He was also concerned with the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, which he believed depicted a sign of something sinister to come. His military mind cautioned him to be “on guard” for anything from Donald Trump.
In the days leading up to January 6th, Milley was worried about Trump calling his fanatics into action. “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 authors wrote.
Milley considered Donald Trump as “the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” the authors said and saw parallels between Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides. “The gospel of the Führer.”
“What they are trying to do here is overturn the government,” a trusted friend told Gen. Milley. “This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff.”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs knew then what he had to do.
“They may try, but they’re not going to f*cking succeed,” Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. “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.”
According to the book, this was the first time in modern US history that the nation’s top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, actually prepared for a showdown with his commander in chief in order to avert an expected coup attempt.
OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Military Chiefs were prepared for a Trump coup.
Intelligencer:
Trump had appointed Milley to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2018, over the objections of Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Army general’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon had been relatively quiet, until last summer, when he appeared in uniform during an infamous photo opportunity for Trump in Lafayette Square that followed the clearing of protesters in front of the White House. Milley later apologized for creating a “perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Although the book chronicles Milley’s concern with Trump dating back to that moment, the general’s worries grew rapidly as the president plunged the nation into chaos following Election Day. Seven days later, Milley got a call from “an old friend” with an explicit warning that Trump and his allies were trying to “overturn the government.” Milley was confident that any attempts by Trump to hold on to power would be thwarted, because the military wouldn’t go along. “They may try, but they’re not going to fucking succeed,” he told aides. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with guns.”
On January 6, Milley watched with disgust as Trump addressed his supporters. Soon after Trump finished speaking, a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election by a joint session of Congress — and many promised to return for Biden’s inauguration. “These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
After Biden took the oath of office on January 20, and Trump was finally an ex-president, former First Lady Michelle Obama encountered Milley at the Capitol and asked how he was feeling. “No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” he said. “You can’t see it under my mask but I do.”
Umm….okay Soooo……
Just where were all these military leaders of *Courage* on the day of the attempted insurrection, Jan. 6, 2021?
(crickets)………
Hey Truth the generals could not start anything unless they got orders from the president. They could not go to the Capitol on their own without orders. But what they were going to do was resign and not follow orders if Trump tried to involve them in any mess.
Yep. I hear you BD….
But what that says to me is that despite their claims that they would’ve done whatever it took to stop him from waging a “Coup”….they would have in fact did absolutely NOTHING…unless they were ordered to.
The Grace of God saved Us on Jan. 6th BD and a few brave Capitol police officers.
Let me be clear……
I’ve never witnessed so many folks running as fast as they can from the harsh LIGHT of history (the Truth about what they did and DIDN’T do when it mattered most to Our country and Our democracy).
These CYA books are cowardly attempts to escape responsibility and judgment for the actions and inactions of Our so-called “leaders” who FAILED Us during Trump’s authoritarian presidency.
It is ONLY by the Grace of God and the majority of American voters that this country remains a FREE society governed by an American democracy.
[According to quote trackers Bartleby and the Yale Book of Quotations, {Benjamin Franklin’s quote} first appeared in 1906 in the American Historical Review; the Review was publishing for the first time the notes of James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
This is what he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” ]
https://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html
“IF you can keep it.” That is still the million dollar question isn’t it?
Tjhis is a good topic to discuss. Number one we see what was going on behind the scene while all the crazy was going on. I am glad they were not going to follow any Hilter orders.
Obama said something real interesting in a interview this year. He said we should not take democracy for granted because we could lose it at any time.