'Guam isn't America': Trump reportedly shrugged off possibility of US territory getting nuked

Former President Donald Trump waved away the idea of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un threatening the U.S. terroritory of Guam with nuclear weapons, because, "Guam isn't America," according to a new piece in The Atlantic describing all the ways Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other military leaders worked behind the scenes to restrain the former president's most dangerous military impulses.

The episode occurred early in the Trump administration, when the former president was saber-rattling against Kim and mocking him as "Little Rocket Man" — prompting then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, to warn Trump that he could be provoking a nuclear threat escalation.

"'If you keep pushing this clown, he could do something with nuclear weapons,' Kelly told him, explaining that Kim, though a dictator, could be pressured by his own military elites to attack American interests in response to Trump’s provocations," reported Jeffrey Goldberg. "When that argument failed to work, Kelly spelled out for the president that a nuclear exchange could cost the lives of millions of Koreans and Japanese, as well as those of Americans throughout the Pacific. Guam, Kelly told him, falls within range of North Korean missiles. 'Guam isn’t America,' Trump responded."

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Guam is not only a terroritory of the United States whose people are U.S. citizens, it is also a vital strategic island to the U.S. military in the Pacific; one quarter of Guam's land is taken up by military installations, and one in eight Guamanians are veterans.

Ultimately, Trump and Kim de-escalated their threats, and the two actually became friends. But Trump's dismissal of Guam was not a one-off incident; throughout Trump's presidency, he came under fire for his lack of understanding, and sometimes even open contempt, for the military, even calling American troops who died fighting in World War I "losers" and "suckers," and asking that wounded veterans be excluded from military parades so he wouldn't have to look at them.

Milley is set to retire as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs later this month, which comes at a time when numerous key military positions are being forcibly held open by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville's protest against the Pentagon's policy allowing travel for abortion care.