What else is new?
New reveleations yesterday from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “War,” out just in time for the fall of the American empire. An MSNBC pundit last night wryly observed that the first two outlets to report it are based in England (that is, beyond Donald Trump’s immediate reach should he win a second term next month), The Independent and the Guardian.
The Independent first:
Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States.
In perhaps an unprecedented (time to retire that term?) move, a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked to meet with the new U.S. attorney general. Milley urged Merrick Garland post-Jan. 6 to investigate domestic extremists and far-right militias. Woodward describes Milley as “deeply convinced” that despite the failure of the attempted coup, Trump remained “a danger to the country.”
“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” Milley told Woodward directly. “A fascist to the core,” Milley repeated.
Mark Milley, a retired US army general who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.
“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues”, the veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward writes in an upcoming book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”
Woodward cites Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist now jailed for contempt of Congress, as saying of Milley: “We’re gonna hold him accountable.”
So, they’d like to recall Milley to service simply to try him before a kangaroo court and jail him. Or worse.
Trump’s wish to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who criticized him in print has been reported before, including by Mark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shouted” about William McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, and Stanley McChrystal, the retired special forces general whose men killed another al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Iraq in 2006.
Milley was able to persuade Trump to back down, Woodward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elected.
Woodward reports Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since retirement in 2023.
A month ago, I suggested that, handed power again, Trump would go full “Off with their heads!” A year ago, we looked at a Christian nationalist, Stew Peters of “The Stew Peters Show.” Appearing with Trump inner circle members at a ReAwaken America event in Las Vegas, Peters argued per a Right Wing Watch report:
“We are going to see extreme accountability,” Peters asserted. “Maximum accountability. We are going to have permanent accountability, with extreme prejudice!”
Every one of Peters’ violent threats was met by wild cheers from the audience.
From last November:
What may be most alarming is the lack of alarm among Americans in general, much less mobilization. Trump’s MAGA foot soldiers? They hunger to be led by their man-child-king. The rest seem blissfully unaware that the Party of Trump has abandoned democracy save for going through the motions.
From Salon:
“This is the nightmare scenario that to millions of Americans is unfathomable but realistically possible,” Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University, told Salon. “It is also the scenario that millions of Americans look forward to with glee and the opportunity for retribution against the enemies of Trump.”
What’s a little pogrom if the tree of Trumpism needs watering?
First, they’ll come for the immigrants, etc.
Threatening to hang Mike Pence wasn’t grisly enough. Trump and his mob will want blood.
Trump is a fascist to the core. Who among us will be the last to know?
[You might want to knock some doors and/or make some calls this weekend.]