Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received an ominous phone call on Election night and then another warning after Donald Trump fired his secretary of defense a few days later.
Milley heard from a fellow four-star general and close friend shortly after polls closed to remind him that "your loyalty is to the Constitution," and that he represented the "stability of this republic," and then-defense secretary Mike Esper also issued dark warnings of his own -- until he was abruptly fired six days later, according to the new book, "I Alone Can Fix It," excerpted by Newsweek.
"We are on the way to a right-wing coup," CIA director Gina Haspel told Milley after Esper's ouster.
The firing had been orchestrated by a political appointee in the White House office of personnel, whose purge of anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump had accelerated since the election, both Milley and Haspel feared they would be next on the chopping block.
"What was unfolding, though, was unique among coups," Newsweek reported, based on the book. "Nobody really thought the disorganized and isolated Trump was capable of organizing anything. And the president didn't have the support of the military or the CIA or the FBI, or any of the other national security agencies, perhaps, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, which had become embarrassingly partisan. Milley even remarked privately that a coup wasn't possible because his camp had all the guns — a comment that was both comforting and chilling, one that showed how perilous the post-election period had become."
In a sense, the military did undertake a coup -- against the sitting president's unconstitutional efforts to overthrow the democratic will of the voters.
"Ultimately, the uniformed military and other permanent national security professionals did take it upon themselves to decide how to defend the nation from this prospective coup, disregarding the new secretary and the other Trump cronies filling leadership positions in the Pentagon," the magazine added. "[Newly installed acting defense secretary Chris] Miller was ignored except in cases where the Secretary of Defense's approval or signature was required. Flouting the hallowed tradition of civilian control of the military that is at the core of the Constitution, and ignoring the commander-in-chief, Milley set the uniformed military as a bulwark against disaster."IN OTHER NEWS: Trump warns 'we will come back' in self-pitying Veterans Day rant
Trump warns ‘we will come back’ in self-pitying Veterans Day rant www.youtube.com
