Milley calls Trump ‘a fascist to the core’ in new
Woodward book
by Ellen Mitchell - 10/11/24 5:15 PM ET
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and retired Gen.
Mark Milley has called former President Trump “a total
fascist” and believes he is the most dangerous person
to the U.S., according to excerpts from the forthcoming
Bob Woodward book.
“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions
when I talked to you about his mental decline and so
forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is
now the most dangerous person to this country,” Milley
told Woodward for the book “War,” which was previewed
by The Guardian. “A fascist to the core.”
Milley, who was chair under Trump and President Biden,
also fears he would be court-martialed should Trump win
the presidency next month because the commander in
chief has power over retired commissioned officers and
can recall them to active duty and court-martial them.
Such a situation is not out of the realm of possibility
because Trump has often voiced his desire to take
revenge on those who have spoken out against him.
“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s
going to try to do,” Milley warned former colleagues,
according to Woodward. “He’s saying it and it’s not
just him, it’s the people around him.”
Woodward cites Steve Bannon, a former senior Trump
adviser, who earlier this year gave a list of people he
believes Trump should go after if he is elected to a
second term, including Milley, former FBI directors
Andrew McCabe and James Comey, former Secretary of
Defense Mark Esper and former Attorney General Bill
Barr.
“We’re gonna hold him accountable,” Bannon says of
Milley in the book.
Trump has previously sought to recall and court-martial
retired senior officers who have criticized him. In a
2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump’s
second confirmed secretary of Defense, the then-
president “yelled” and “shouted” about two former
military officials, William McRaven and Stanley
McChrystal, Woodward writes.
McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in
Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin
Laden, had written a piece for the Washington Post
about Trump, saying “there is nothing left to stop the
triumph of evil.”
And McChrystal, a retired special forces general whose
men killed al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq
in 2006, made comments on CNN calling Trump “immoral”
and “dishonest.”
Trump called Milley and Esper to the White House and
pushed the two to take care of the retired officials,
but they pressed him not to seek to punish McRaven and
McChrystal.
“The president didn’t want to hear it,” so Milley
promised Trump he would “‘take care of this,’”
according to Woodward.
Milley then called McRaven and McChrystal and warned
them to “pull it back” and “step off the public stage.”
Woodward also wrote of Milley receiving “a non-stop
barrage of death threats” since he retired last year,
saying he has installed bullet-proof glass and blast-
proof curtains at his home at his own expense.
Milley has often spoken out against Trump and relayed
stories from his time in the Joint Chiefs from 2019 to
2023.
In a speech during his retirement ceremony, Milley
infamously appeared to directly refer to Trump, who was
then seeking to become the Republican presidential
nominee.
“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant
or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe
dictator,” Milley said. “We don’t take an oath to an
individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we
take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re
willing to die to protect it.”
Woodward’s book has also revealed several other
bombshells, including that Trump sent COVID-19 testing
machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin for
personal use in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and
that he has had at least seven phone calls with Putin
since leaving office.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for
comment.
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