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New Book Chronicles Trump’s Fraught Relationship With Top Military Officials


WASHINGTON – Former President Donald J. Trump told his top White House aide he wished he had generals like those who reported to Adolf Hitler, saying they were “absolutely loyal” to the leader. of the Nazi regime, according to an upcoming book about the 45th president.

“Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Mr. Trump addressed his chief of staff, John Kelly, to the question with profanity, according to an excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Published online by The New Yorker on Monday morning. (Mr. Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times; Glasser is the editor of The New Yorker.)

The excerpt depicts Mr. Trump as deeply frustrated by his top military officials, who he considers either not loyal enough or disobeying him. In conversation with Mr. Kelly, which took place years before the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the authors write, the chief of staff told Mr. Trump that German generals had “tried to try” killed Hitler three times and almost dragged him away.”

The removed Mr. Trump, according to the excerpt, appeared oblivious to the World War II history that Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star general, knew all too well.

“No, no, no, they are completely loyal to him,” replied the president, “according to the authors of the book. “In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich were completely submissive to Hitler; this is the model he wants for his army. Kelly told Trump there was no such thing as an American general, but the president was determined to test the proposal.”

Much of the excerpt focuses on General Mark A. Milley, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country’s top military official, under Mr. Trump. When the president offered him the job, General Milley told him, “I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.” But he quickly grew disgusted with the president.

General Milley’s frustration with the president culminated on June 1, 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters flooded Lafayette Square, near the White House. Mr. Trump asked to send the military to clear the protesters, but General Milley and other top aides refused. In response, Mr Trump shouted: “You are all losers!” according to the excerpt. Turning to Milley, Trump said, ‘Can’t you shoot them? Just shoot them in the leg or something? ‘” the authors wrote.

After the square was cleared by the National Guard and police, General Milley walked with the president and other aides through the empty park so he could take a picture of Mr. Trump in front of a church on the other side. The authors said General Milley later viewed his decision to join the presidency as a “misjudgment that would haunt him forever, a ‘moment on the road to Damascus,’ as he later put it.”

A week after that incident, General Milley wrote – but never moved – a scathing resignation letter, accusing the president he served of depoliticizing the military, “undermining the international order.” “, does not value diversity and accepts tyranny, dictatorship and extremism. members of the military who took an oath to fight against.

“I believe you are doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” the general wrote in the letter, which was previously undisclosed and was published in its entirety by The New Yorker. General Milley wrote that Mr. Trump did not honor those who fought against fascism and Nazism in World War II.

General Milley wrote: “Now it is clear that you do not understand that world order. “You don’t understand what war is. In fact, you follow many of the principles we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that.”

However, General Milley ultimately decided to stay on to ensure that the military could act as a bulwark against an increasingly out of control president, according to the book’s authors.

General Milley told his officers, according to excerpts from the New Yorker: “I will fight him. “As he has seen, the challenge is to prevent Trump from causing further damage, while acting in a manner consistent with the commander-in-chief’s obligation to carry out orders. ‘If they want the court to arm me or put me in jail, do it.’ “

In addition to the revelations about General Milley, excerpts from the book reveal new details about Mr. Trump’s interactions with his top military and national security officials, and document impressive efforts. of the former president’s most senior aides to avert a domestic or international crisis of the past weeks. after Mr. Trump lost his re-election bid.

In the summer of 2017, excerpts from the book reveal, Mr. Trump returned from watching the Bastille Day parade in Paris and told Mr. Kelly he wanted one of his own. But the president told Mr. Kelly: “Look, I don’t want anyone to get hurt in the parade. This doesn’t sound good to me,” the authors wrote.

“Kelly couldn’t believe what he was hearing,” the excerpt continues. “Those are heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there is only one group of people who are more heroic than them – and they are buried at Arlington.” Mr Trump replied: “I don’t want them. According to the authors, it doesn’t look good to me”.

The excerpt highlights how many senior aides to the president tried to burnish their reputations after the January 6 attacks. Like General Milley, who mostly refrained from criticizing Mr. Trump publicly. , they now wish to clear their disagreements with him by collaborating with the book’s authors and other journalists.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has never publicly refuted Mr. Trump’s extravagant election claims and has rarely criticized him since, privately refuted the fraudulent claims that Mr. His advisors accepted.

On the evening of November 9, 2020, after the media called the race for Joseph R. Biden Jr., Pompeo called General Milley and asked to see him, according to the excerpt. During the conversation at General Milley’s kitchen table, Mr. Pompeo was candid about what he thought of the people around the president.

Pompeo told General Milley, according to the authors. Behind the scenes, they wrote, Mr. Pompeo quickly accepted that the election was over and refused to move forward with its reversal.

“He was completely against it,” a senior State Department official recalls. Pompeo cynically justified this jarring contrast between what he said in public and in private. “It was important for him not to get fired in the end, to stay there for the bitter end,” the senior official said, “according to the excerpt.

The authors detail what they call an “unusual arrangement” in the weeks following the election between Pompeo and General Milley to hold daily morning phone calls with Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff. the White House, in an effort to make sure the president did not commit dangerous acts.

The authors write: “Pompeo and Milley soon called them ‘landing the plane’ phone calls. “Our job is to land this plane safely and effect a peaceful transfer of power on January 20th,” Milley told his staff. ‘This is our obligation to this nation.’ However, there is a problem. ‘Both engines failed, landing gear stuck. We are in an emergency situation. ‘”

6 hearings on Capitol Hill revealed that some of the former president’s top aides privately resisted Mr. Trump’s denials of the election, even as some refused to make it public. Several people, including Pat A. Cipollone, a former White House adviser, testified that they tried – but failed – to convince the president that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.

In the excerpt, the authors say that General Milley concluded that Mr Cipollone was “a force” trying to keep the railings around the president. The general also believes that Pompeo is “really trying to achieve a peaceful handover of power.” ,” the authors wrote. But they wrote that General Milley was “never sure about the creation of Meadows. Is the Chief of Staff trying to land the plane or hijack it? “

General Milley is not the only top official who has considered resigning in response to the president’s actions, the authors write.

The excerpt details private conversations between the president’s national security team as they discuss what to do in the event the president tries to take actions they feel they can’t follow. The authors report that General Milley consulted with Robert Gates, former secretary of defense and former CIA director.

The advice from Mr. Gates was straightforward, with the authors writing: “‘Keep the delegation leaders with you and make it clear to the White House that if you go, they will all go, so the White House knows that this is not just the case. is about firing Mark Milley. This is about the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff resigning in response. ‘”

The excerpt makes it clear that Mr. Trump doesn’t always get the people he wants. During an Oval Office exchange, Trump asked General Paul Selva, an Air Force officer and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what he thought of the president’s wish for a military parade. the nation’s capital on July 4th. .

General Selva’s response, which has not been previously reported, was blunt and not what the president wanted to hear, according to the book’s authors.

“I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,” General Selva said. “’Portugal is a dictatorship – and the parades are to show people with guns. And in this country, we don’t do that. ‘ He added, “It’s not who we are.”



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