Gen. Mark Milley has made it clear multiple times to Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday and to the House on Wednesday that his call with the Chinese wasn't a rogue operation without the involvement of the Secretary of Defense or other military leaders.
Milley had just finished schooling Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) when Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) chimed in.
"I wanted to ask you, did you tell Gen. Li when you talked to him on the phone that if you were going to attack China, you would let him know ahead of time?" asked Hartzler.
"So this is a longer conversation," said Milley. "It's a VTC with Gen. Li. There's a body of intelligence that leads up to this that was persuasive to Secretary [Mark] Esper and myself and many others that the Chinese thought, wrongly, that the United States was going to attack them. I am certain, guaranteed certain, that President [Donald] Trump had no intent to attack and it was my task to make sure I communicated that. And the purpose was to de-escalate."
"As part of that conversation I said, Gen. Li, there's not going to be a war, there's not going to be an attack between great powers and if it was, the tensions would build-up, there would be calls going back and forth between senior officials, hell, I'll call you, but we're not going to attack you, trust me, we're not going to attack you," recalled Milley. "These are two great powers and I am doing my best to transmit the president's intent, President Trump's intent, to make sure the incident doesn't escalate."
While Milley made it clear that Republicans have mischaracterized the facts and Hartzler agreed to the facts, she still said that Milley should resign.
"I understand your intent, but I think you're articulating that — you telling him you would give him a call, that's worthy of your resignation," said Harzler. "I think that's against our country that you would give our number one adversary that information and tell him that."
See the exchange below:
Missouri's Vicky Hartzler humiliated in hearing with generalswww.youtube.com
