It was right after the 2020 election that Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, started to get vocal -- discreetly -- about what Donald Trump might do in reaction to losing.
Milley had had some time to think it over since the day, in June 2020, that he'd been suckered into backing Trump at his church-steps photo-op -- the one that involved dispersing Black Lives Matter protesters by force. Milley called it his "Damascus moment" (from the Biblical story about how Paul saw Jesus as God as he recovered from being temporarily blinded.)
Milley saw two possible scenarios. The first was that Trump might try to use the military against Americans to force them to accept his claim of a stolen election. The second was that Trump would start hostilities with Iran. That option came up repeatedly by Trump advisors in White House meetings, and Milley repeatedly argued against it. "You're going to have an [effing] war," Milley would say.
New Yorker writer Susan B. Glassner says that Milley believed the U.S. had already come close to a conflict with the Islamic Republic. Ultimately, Milley feared that Trump would create a crisis from which he, Trump, could then save the nation. It would parallel a moment in Hitler's journey to power -- a "Reichstag moment." After January 3rd, Milley finally convinced Trump that the costs and dangers were too high.
Late in 2020, Milley started having phone meetings frequently, in the mornings, with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He called them "land the plane" meetings, as in "it's an emergency in the air -- and we've still got to land the plane."
He also held frequent, private meetings with the Joint Chiefs to tell them to contact him immediately if Trump made a demand that wasn't legal. He told Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and some Biden administration staffers that if Trump tried to attempt a coup, the military would not help him.
Unsurprisingly, there's a book coming out about this period. Trump's reaction to the news was "If I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Miley."
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Why would Trump and his advisers expect to remain in power after starting a war with Iran?
Was Milley doing the right thing? Did he miss signals about the insurrection attempt?
Should Milley have had plans in hand for an event like Trump-backers' attack on the Capitol?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/youre-gonna-have-a-fucking-war-mark-milleys-fight-to-stop-trump-from-striking-iran?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_071621&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5ed3f9576950ac793e321838&cndid=25724484&hasha=e14e37b58b6aec9b5347b8dfc441e60c&hashb=b00cbe6935a67d29b5fb6e18d3061c1eb9a8237f&hashc=288145b72138d7acc1f2b7349955610c06ee808b5015f2c8e27e8595090e7854&esrc=Auto_Subs&utm_content=B&utm_term=TNY_Daily
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