In an interview on “60 Minutes” on Wednesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley said he will take “appropriate measures” to make sure he and his family are safe in the wake of recent comments made by former President Trump.

Milley’s words come after a Truth Social post by Trump last week calling the chairman a “Woke train wreck” and accusing him of treason, seeming to reference calls made by Milley to China for reassurance at the end of Trump’s term.

“This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump’s post read. “A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!”

“I’ve got adequate safety precautions,” the military leader said in response to a question about his concern about his safety from CBS’s Norah O’Donnell.

  • ViewSonik@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Trump should be in prison along with all of his co-conspirators. The longer he stays free, the more crimes he commits.

  • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It would be really cool if a judge, any judge, would grow a fucking spine and treat Trump like everyone else. Stay the motherfucker, place a gag order, and lock him up until trial, just like every other normal citizen. Fuck this special treatment bullshit.

  • Ducks@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The irony being Trump has committed multiple acts so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!

  • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    How stupid do you have to be to threaten a 4-star army general?

    Well, I guess as stupid as Trump, but still it defies logic.

    • ki77erb@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      In a normal world it would be incredibly stupid. In the reality that we’re living in, insulting military members, even wounded veterans can appeal to a certain crowd. Even ironically if some of the people in the crowd are military members or wounded veterans. The number one rule when you’re in a cult, is that the cult leader is always right.

    • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It is until it isn’t.

      Jan 6 was kind of a miracle because the cops sided with the government. But there were plenty of out of state cops on the side of the terrorists.

      Same with the military. The hope would be that the majority obey the command structure and realize that trump et al are actively opposed to them. But… you tend to not get the best and the brightest to agree to join the military.

      Or, to go back to Jan 6: There were definitely bad actor secret service agents and pence likely would have been lynched if he had the wrong detail that day. Same with congress people who had to genuinely think about who they were trusting.

      So yeah. milley is generally well liked enough and high up enough that he knows who he can trust. But you can bet he is being careful about who he lets protect his family and which bases he visits.

      • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Please don’t ask me for a source because I don’t have one, but I distinctly remember reporting about Pence being warned not to trust any unfamiliar secret service agents, and refusing to get into a car after the riot began because he did not recognise the driver.

        Edit: Found a source:

        After being taken to an undisclosed portion of the Capitol during the riot, Pence’s Secret Service agents, whom Raskin suspected were reporting directly to Trump’s security detail, asked him to enter an armored limousine. The intent, some have theorized, was to drive Pence away from the building, preventing him from certifying the election results, after he had signaled his unwillingness to go against his duties and keep Trump in power.

        […]

        “I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence said, in response to Giebels’ insistence that he enter the armored vehicle. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Meaning no disrespect, but it’s pretty obvious that you don’t know much about the US military. The senior officer corps uniformly despises Trump for all of the obvious reasons that we already know about, and no doubt for other reasons that aren’t public knowledge.

        Trump is only popular among the enlisted ranks, and even that’s not universally true.

        In any case, while the enlisted ranks know how to keep things rolling and coordinated at the lower levels of organization, there is no world in which any of them knows how to coordinate whole divisions, carrier groups, fighter squadrons, signals intelligence, bomber groups, the nuclear arsenal, and so on and so forth.

        The US military is a vast and incredibly complex organization and the only people who really know how to operate it are all in the senior officer corps which again, uniformly despises Trump.

        All that said, I would almost kind of like some crazy MAGA fucker to try to assassinate Miley. You know he’s protected by some of the most highly competent and experienced security experts on the planet.

        • vimdiesel@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          This is why tuberville is trying to stop military promotions, to help trump in case he wins in 2024. One of Trump’s first action would be to clean house in the military and extract anyone who doesn’t promise to help with his military coup

        • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Got it. Can’t shoot a general without having a nuclear submarine capable of launching a vtol off the deck.

          It is enlisted and junior officers who are actually standing guard. It doesn’t matter if every single captain and above is a true patriot (also, I have had to give presentations to some magats at much higher ranks than your “The military is great” post would say but…). You still are going to want to make sure you know the lieutenant and the sergeant who is actually standing near your kids with an assault rifle.

          And, just because we are in full non sequitor territory: you don’t get to the upper ranks without being a politician. And there are very much political decisions to be made about standing up to prevent efforts by the administration who you will likely be working for within the next decade. Because hopefully trump will never be elected ever again (not like he ever really was to begin with but…). But republicans will get power eventually and they will likely be more magat than not.

    • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Basically in his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (a council of the different military branches) he called his Chinese counterpart during the election chaos to assure them Trump couldn’t unilaterally declare war on China:

      Woodward and Costa describe how Milley learned in October 2020 that the Chinese had become concerned that Trump would preemptively attack China because Trump was losing the 2020 election and his rhetoric against China was growing increasingly hostile.

      Milley again called his Chinese counterpart on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, to again reassure him that the American government was stable and not an immediate threat to China.

      Source

      • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        That sounds more like the actuoi of someone desperai trying to put out fires whilst Trump was tossing gasoline everywhere

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        9 months ago

        I’m curious as to what tfg was involved with, wrt China. There’s something he’s afraid will come out.

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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        9 months ago

        In general or was there a specific Mike Pence situation where he just refused to commit treason?

        • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          Reportedly Milley anticipated Trump attempting a coup and actively worked behind the scenes to make sure it wouldn’t work.

          https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/politics/milley-trump-politics-january-6/index.html

          Milley was deeply concerned Trump and his allies might attempt a coup after the November 2020 election, and he compared Trump’s lies about election fraud to the rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler as he rose to power in Germany.

          “This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told his aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”

          The official acknowledged that during the final weeks of the Trump administration, Milley engaged in activities and communications not part of the traditional portfolio of a Joint Chiefs chairman, carrying a heavier political load to keep Trump in check. While Milley “tried his hardest to actively stay out of politics,” the official said, if the events that occurred brought him into that arena temporarily, “so be it.”

          “He’s not going to sit in silence while people try to use the military against Americans,” the official said.

          After the election, Trump’s blustery rhetoric turned into action when he fired Esper and installed loyalists at the Pentagon, raising Milley’s fears that Trump or his allies could try to attempt a coup to overturn the election results.

          According to Leonnig and Rucker, Milley was shaken by the threat of a coup and 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 and the rest of the Joint Chiefs informally planned for what they would do in the event of an order they deemed illegal, dangerous or ill-advised, including a proposal to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out the orders.

          After the January 6 attack, Milley and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement condemning the “sedition and insurrection” of the rioters who breached the Capitol and attacked police officers.

          Milley focused his efforts on ensuring there was a “ring of steel” around the city for the January 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden, according to Leonnig and Rucker. “We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in,” Milley said.

          They hate him because he lived up to his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They hate him because he’s an actual patriot.

          • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Holy shit. I feel like I was living under a blanket or something. I didn’t realize how much Milley actually suspected and anticipated a coup attempt.

            That is FUCKING insane. Jan 6 was incredibly bad, but that the joint chiefs actively suspected an attempt at a coup is something altogether insane. If he wins this next election I don’t think we’ll have another.

            • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              I feel like I was living under a blanket or something.

              I mean I guess. Didn’t lots of people on “the left” (by American standards) suspect something like this to happen? Think of the man what you will, but that comedian Bill Maher predicted it since before Trump was sworn into office, kept saying it for four years straight at every opportunity.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In an interview on “60 Minutes” on Wednesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley said he will take “appropriate measures” to make sure he and his family are safe in the wake of recent comments made by former President Trump.

    Milley’s words come after a Truth Social post by Trump last week calling the chairman a “Woke train wreck” and accusing him of treason, seeming to reference calls made by Milley to China for reassurance at the end of Trump’s term.

    “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump’s post read.

    Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper expressed his concerns Monday about retaliation by the former president against people whom he has had strife with — such as Milley — if he returns to office, calling them “legitimate.”

    “Look, I think it’s a legitimate fear,” Esper told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.

    “If you recall from my memoir … I cite a circumstance where [Trump], egged on by his close advisers, wanted to call back to active duty Adm. McRaven and Gen. McChrystal, to court-martial them, for some things that they allegedly said in in the public domain, and Milley and I had to talk the president out of doing that, for any number of reasons.”


    The original article contains 284 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 24%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Honestly, I gotta say maybe Trump is what the country needs.

    CALM DOWN

    hi

    He’s exactly what we need to see the exact special treatment that the rich and powerful get. He’s the shinning example of what kind of shit gets to fly through our machine unscathed.

    • ilickfrogs@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Could you imagine if a random charismatic person was the cause of Jan 6th? They’d be rotting in prison for the rest of their life. But oh golly gee, a rich guy? It’s ok, he won’t do it again.