Give It a Rest Mark Milley
The nation's highest-ranking general wants you to know that he stopped Donald Trump's power grab ... even though it's far from clear that he actually did that.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
First things first: tomorrow, I’ll be Zoomcasting with my good friend Helaine Olen, a columnist for the Washington Post. We’re going to be talking about this recent piece of hers, which argues that liberals need to take rising crime rates more seriously. In addition, we’re going to spend a few minutes discussing music, as Helaine is working on a piece commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Harry Chapin. So prepare for a deep dive into the singer-songwriters of the 1970s!
The Zoomcast tomorrow will be at a special time — 1:30 PM. I will send around a link tomorrow morning, and again, it is for paid subscribers only, so click that button above and join us!
Do You Want To Hear A Secret?
It appears the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, has been very busy talking to a couple of Washington Post reporters about the last days of the Trump Administration.
According to reporting at CNN:
Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.
… Milley is quoted extensively and comes off in a positive light as someone who tried to keep democracy alive because he believed it was on the brink of collapse after receiving a warning one week after the election from an old friend.
"What they are trying to do here is overturn the government," said the friend, who is not named, according to the authors. "This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff."
So if I understand this correctly (and I think I do), Milley was worried about an attempt to overthrow the government because … some guy warned him. One would hope that the highest-ranking soldier in the US military would be relying on better sources of information.
While I understand why Milley was concerned, I’m still a bit perplexed by this.
Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be "on guard" for what might come.
"They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed," Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. "You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns."
… "Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military."
If the military has the guns and Milley had no intention of carrying out an illegal order (which, as noted in the CNN piece, he told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), then the chances of a coup were practically non-existent. So Milley’s fears seem to be vastly overstated. And it’s also not clear what role the military had to play here other than simply refusing to carry out an illegal order, which is already the responsibility and duty of every member of the US armed forces. Milley, to his credit, said he wouldn’t carry out an illegal order but as the great philosopher, Chris Rock, once sagely noted, that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Then there is this.
Milley viewed Trump as "the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose," the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler's rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump's false claims of election fraud.
"This is a Reichstag moment," Milley told aides, according to the book. "The gospel of the Führer."
Ahead of a November pro-Trump "Million MAGA March" to protest the election results, Milley told aides he feared it "could be the modern American equivalent of 'brownshirts in the streets,'" referring to the pro-Nazi militia that fueled Hitler's rise to power.
… These guys are Nazis, they're boogaloo boys, they're Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in.
I hate when people compare Trump to Nazis because it’s not remotely accurate. As Sheri Berman has written extensively, Donald Trump is not a fascist, and Trumpism is not akin to Nazism. The people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were not the same people the US fought in World War II.
But I also can’t figure what exactly Milley did about all this. It’s great he told a friend that the January 6 pro-Trump rally could lead to violence. But, did he make any preparations to have the military on alert if called to help by the DC or Capitol Police? If he did, I’d like to hear about that, but Milley telling two reporters that he was really concerned — while making misplaced historical analogies — doesn’t tell us much.
The fact is, what prevented a coup from happening is that secretaries of state, state legislatures across the country, and a host of state and federal judges — both Republican and Democratic — refused to go along with Trump’s efforts to steal the election. They got an assist from Trump’s Department of Justice, which balked at filing lawsuits on Trump’s behalf, and even the Vice President, Mike Pence, who helped to certify the 2020 election results. While a majority of House Republicans refused to certify the results — for purely political reasons — there was really no chance of a successful coup or overturning of the election results.
So tell me again: what did Mark Milley do to protect democracy?
Clean-Up on Aisle 5
There is a broader context to Milley’s statements to the Post. This picture.
On June 1, Milley made the dangerous and ill-conceived decision to walk with President Trump to a church across from the White House only minutes after law enforcement forcibly cleared peaceful protesters from the area. From a civilian/military standpoint, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should not ever participate in what was, in effect, a political photo op. What makes this picture even worse is that Milley, dressed in full battle fatigues, did so only days after Trump had pushed the idea of military deployments in American cities to put down protests and demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd. It lent credence to fears that the military would side with Trump against the protesters and the rule of law.
In fairness to Milley, he had the good sense to apologize for his mistake. Still, it’s difficult not to see his statements to the Washington Post as an effort to burnish his reputation after that terrible mistake from last year.
Milley wants to present himself, not as the guy who made a critical error in judgment that undermined confidence in the military’s role as a non-political actor, but rather as the guy who stopped Trump’s anti-democratic power grab.
But as I’ll note again, other than pledging to do his duty — and not carry out an illegal order — it’s not clear what, if anything, he did to stop Trump.
In fact, Milley’s admission that he involved himself in what was, to a large extent, a political dispute is concerning. But, even more troubling is this story:
Behind the scenes, the book says Milley was on the frontlines of trying to protect the country, including an episode where he tried to stop Trump from firing FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Leonnig and Rucker recount a scene when Milley was with Trump and his top aides in a suite at the Army-Navy football game in December, and publicly confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
"What's going on? Are you guys getting rid of Wray or Gina?" Milley asked. "Come on chief. What the hell is going on here? What are you guys doing?"
"Don't worry about it," Meadows said. "Just some personnel moves."
"Just be careful," Milley responded, which Leonnig and Rucker write was said as a warning that he was watching.
Where does Milley get off warning the White House Chief of Staff against potential personnel changes? What exactly was he going to do if Trump did fire Haspel and Wray? Again, I understand these were extraordinary circumstances, but for the nation’s top general to involve himself in, for example, domestic law enforcement, there better be a pretty damn good reason. This is entirely outside the Joint Chiefs’ mandate and responsibilities, and having the nation’s top soldier weigh in on matters like this suggests a dangerous erosion of civil-military norms.
First Draft of History or Reputation Polishing
Milley is hardly the first public figure to leak a story to reporters that makes him look good. Bob Woodward has practically made a career out of writing such books. The latest crop of Trump tomes is no different. But, they all need to be read with a suspicious eye. Little of what we’re hearing in these books is new or tells us a story about Trump that is different from what we saw during his presidency. Instead, much of what is going on here is an effort by those around Trump to make themselves seem slightly less complicit in his presidency.
While I don’t fault the authors for researching and writing these books, I’m not sure why anyone wants to read them — at least for now. We all lived through four years of Trump’s presidency: do we need to be reminded again that it was a complete shitshow? So many of the anecdotes that are emerging from these books only confirm what we saw at the time — that Trump is a dangerous and dumb sociopath with authoritarian instincts and surrounds himself with enablers and sycophants. If you want to read that so soon after we emerged from the Trump nightmare, you do you. Personally, I’ll be doing something else.
What’s Going On?
This is a helluva piece by Michael Kranish on the evolution of Tucker Carlson into the media’s most prominent purveyor of white grievance.
Tom Nichols eviscerates J.D. Vance.
The American West is a climate hellscape, and it may be a preview of what’s to come for the rest of us.
Basketball Interlude
Giannis is a freak
Musical Interlude
I haven’t recommended a Dead show in a while, but here’s one that should tide you over for a while - the Greek Theater, July 13, 1984. I’ll be honest; I’m not a huge fan of mid-80s Dead. Brent’s keyboard work is too high-pitched and synthy, Jerry’s guitar tone is not my favorite, and the band generally plays too fast, but this show is still pretty great. In this show, there are two highlights - the ridiculous “Scarlet Begonias -Touch Of Grey - Fire on The Mountain” and the “Dark Star” encore. Put them together with a killer first set, and you have a top-notch show, even for 1984!
While Milley is a self-serving, image conscious phony, I still applaud the continued attention to the dangerous events that Trump and his toadies are still trying to inflict on the citizens of the U.S. Keep shining the lights brightly; it is apparently all that can be done.