Outside the Beltway

Milley Called Trump, “Fascist to the Core”

Another tidbit from Woodward’s new book.

Steven L. Taylor
28

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Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, top center, watches as President Donald Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Friday, Dec. 20, 2019, before traveling to Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Via The Independent: Trump’s top general calls ex-president ‘fascist to the core’ and ‘most dangerous person to this country,’ new book says.

 the Army veteran expressed even more strident concerns to Woodward himself at a March 2023 meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.

[…]

“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,” he said.

[…]

“A fascist to the core,” Milley repeated.

To refresh memories: Milley was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was, therefore, the highest ranking member of the US military. He is no random observer.

If Milley feels that way about Trump, and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the book, I really wish he, and others, would go on the record on video to say these things. People read stuff like this in a book and dismiss it (or never see it). If Milley thinks, and I think he is correct, that Trump is a fascist and a danger, now’s the time to put up or shut up.

I expect that his military reticence makes him unwilling to actively campaign. But he has retired and he has an opportunity to serve his country in a different capacity.

That Milley has concerns about Trump is obvious beyond what Woodward has written.

The general’s private comments to Woodward, which have not been previously reported, were echoed in cutting remarks Milley made publicly at his September 2023 retirement ceremony, when, without mentioning Trump’s name, he appeared to take a swipe at the ex-president. 

In the impassioned speech, he defiantly said the US military is “unique” among the world’s fighting forces because it does not profess fealty to any one person.

““We don’t take an oath to a country, we don’t take an oath to a tribe, we don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator,” he said.

Apparently referencing Trump, he immediately added: “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator!”

““We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it,” he said.

Now is not the time for subtlety and keeping everyone guessing as to what he almost certainly meant. Time to be as forthright as possible.

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28 responses to “Milley Called Trump, “Fascist to the Core””

  1. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    Shouldn’t it be fascist to the core? The post title seems off.

    1
  2. Fog Avatar
    Fog

    Well, the General has identified the fault line in the military. Vets or active duty military who support Cheeto Benito do so in violation of their oath to defend the Constitution, like Michael Flynn.
    We can only hope there are more Milleys than Flynns. Or to put it another way, more patriots than traitors.

    3
  3. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo: You are correct. Autocorrect did that to me twice and I didn’t notice it in the title.

    1
  4. joe Avatar
    joe

    Here let me translate for you: Leftists don’t accept the fact that a Republican can be the President. Sure they can physically occupy the office, but they’re not really in control of the Executive Branch. Therefore, their policies don’t have to be carried out. If Republicans insist that yes they can be the President then they are a “fascist.” In fact, any opposition to the Left is “fascist.”

  5. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    “Link”

    Walter Huss Knew That if Fascism Ever Came to America, it would happen via the hostile takeover of a major political party

    snip

    The traditional Republican gatekeepers did their best to stop it. In January 2016 the “old grey lady” of conservatism, the National Review, published an entire issue entitled “Against Trump” in which two dozen prominent conservatives made the case for why Trump, “a philosophically unmoored political opportunist…with strong-man overtones,” was a “cancer on conservatism” who should be denied the GOP nomination. We all know how that turned out. And within a couple of years over half of the contributors to that National Review issue were onboard the Trump train.

    The rapid extinction/capitulation of “anti-Trump Republicans” points to another important fact about modern American parties—while they might wield tremendous power in terms of securing votes in general elections, they are remarkably hollow and pliable as institutions. The GOP in particular, now that it has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc, has proven itself to be quite susceptible to what many Republicans in 2015-6, including many who are now on the Trump Train, would have considered to be a hostile takeover. And that takeover has involved not just the GOP’s buildings, letterhead, and fundraising apparatus, but also its political culture. That Trumpist political culture has rewired the hearts and minds of many people who used to be quite different sorts of “Republicans.” After all, who would have thought that a guy who called Trump “America’s Hitler” in February 2016 would agree 8 years later to be his running mate?

    Much much more at the link.

    ETA:

    Past is not necessarily a straightforward prologue. Just because America has a long history of anti-democratic illiberalism and just because those fascistic energies have gotten a firm foothold in the GOP via Trumpism, that doesn’t mean the triumph of such forces is assured. There are still many unpredictable contingencies to unfold in the coming months and years, but we can perhaps better understand and respond to them if we have a clearer grasp of some of the deeper historical currents swirling beneath our turbulent present.

    Walter Huss: The Fascist Troll Who Pulled off a Hostile, Parasitic Takeover of the Oregon GOP in 1978
    My story begins, like many stories about the history of the American right, in 1964 with the presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater. Just as many longtime Republicans opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016 because they saw him as an extremist wild card who’d brought new, dangerously illiberal elements into the GOP, that was how many Republicans thought about 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwater and his supporters. After attending the 1964 GOP convention, for example, longtime Republican Jackie Robinson, said “I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”

    More, too long to quote.

    1
  6. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @joe:
    That didn’t make any sense. Also was that the case with previous Republican presidencies?

    Trump Republican critics (as well as his critics on the left) continually point out how history words and actions point to fascism. If you don’t agree, perhaps you could start by providing an affirmative defense of those words and actions.

    Perhaps you could start by defending Trump’s racist lies about Haitians in Springfield or his lies about FEMA in Appalachia. I am sure you can explain how those really are not lies designed to consolidate power by turning his followers against Black immigrants and current government workers.

    11
  7. Bill Jempty Avatar
    Bill Jempty

    @joe:

    Leftists don’t accept the fact that a Republican can be the President.

    I’m a registered Democrat who has voted for Republicans too since I first registered to vote in 1979. Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Connie Mack III, to name a few.

    Trump won’t be getting my vote.

    6
  8. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @joe:
    Also, FWIW is your view any different than the belief of Trumpists like yourself who think all Democrats are communists and won’t admit that a Democrat legitimately won the 2020 election.

    Trump and Vance continue to argue that Biden is an illegitimate President and Harris is an illegitimate candidate. So for once your post reads as a bunch of salty both-sides tears.

    5
  9. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    @charontwo:

    The link seems to be describing a very Godly sort of fascism. Towards the end of the long piece came to this:

    “In 1968, while I was County Chairman of the Curry County Republican Central Committee, I received a long phone call from a man who identified himself as Walter Huss, a preacher with the Church of God. He was using a WATS line, so he kept me on the phone for 45 minutes that time, and over an hour another time. The gist of the conversation was God had told him to take over the Republican Party, and that God Had told him that I was his man in Curry County. The time was spent explaining the strategy, several times over, because I could not accept it as the Christian thing to do. When he said God had told him I was to “take over” the party in Curry County, I had two objections: first, if God had told him that, why hadn’t God told me Himself? NO, I was not being facetious. In my previous experience, If God had something for me to do, He revealed it to me, not through some third party. And second, I was already County chairman in what way was I to “take over” from myself? It seemed I was to become a dictator and railroad what he said ‘had to be done’ without reference to the elected committeemen and women. That was trickery. Come party convention time, Huss’s plan was to get a slate of officers (all from his church) elected by skillful strategy. As soon as I arrived at the convention hotel one of his henchmen told me Huss wanted to see me in his ‘inner sanctum’—a suite of rooms on the top floor that he had set up for the purpose. I was ushered in like a VIP and he explained the strategy to me…[Crowhurst refuses to go along with the plan]…He had given his orders and all any of us peons had to do was to obey them. They were God’s orders transmitted through him.”

    If Norman Crowhurst found Huss to be an outlandishly authoritarian presence at the Republican state convention, you can imagine what the secular and moderate Republican establishment thought of him. One such moderate, state Representative and future Speaker of the House Roger Martin, told me a story about the 1970 convention in Eugene that conveys the contempt that people like him had for Huss. After an evening of partying with a group of his fellow mainstream Republican delegates at the hotel bar, Martin signed the bill with Huss’s name and the room number of the penthouse suite Huss was using as his “inner sanctum” that year. When Martin saw Huss the next morning as everyone was checking out to go home Huss was apoplectic about being charged for alcohol (he was a teetotaler) and was plaintively making his case to the desk clerks that he shouldn’t have to pay.

    The gusto with which Martin told me that story and the gales of laughter that accompanied it conveyed just how much derision he felt toward Huss and the Greek chorus of theocrats Huss inspired to start coming to OR GOP convention meetings to vote as a block. Martin, a devout Catholic and firm believer in religious pluralism, described himself to me in this 2022 interview as a “Lincoln Republican.” That’s how he explained both his revulsion for Huss’s racial and religious bigotry in the 1970s, as well as his distaste for “that jackass” Donald Trump. Some might say Roger Martin was being very unfair to President Trump who did an amazing job of discovering that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and is getting noticed more and more, but oh well.

    Huss diligently worked at his Christian-precinct-captain-recruitment project for ten years before it finally bore fruit with his election to party chairman in 1978. Over the course of the decade from 1968 to 1978 during which Huss was doing this organizational work, the establishment of the party did little to counter him. Those pesky Birchers of the early 1960s had seemingly faded from the scene, and it was inconceivable that a “kook” like Huss and his network of working class evangelicals scattered around the state could possibly succeed in taking over the OR GOP from popular moderates like Mark Hatfield and Tom McCall, both of whom won statewide elections by comfortable margins in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

    I had some interactions with John Birch members back in the day, I noticed there was a lot of religiousity attached to JBS functions.

    1
  10. Barry Avatar
    Barry

    @joe: “Here let me translate for you: Leftists don’t accept the fact that a Republican can be the President.”

    Soooooo, sooo wrong. Up is down, North is South, East is West, Slavery is Freedom and War is Peace.

    4
  11. Moosebreath Avatar
    Moosebreath

    @Matt Bernius:

    “Also, FWIW is your view any different than the belief of Trumpists like yourself who think all Democrats are communists and won’t admit that a Democrat legitimately won the 2020 election.”

    Or the birther theory that Obama was ineligible to be President, due to his Kenyan father, which Trump was the most prominent exponent of. Note also that the same argument is sometimes made about Harris due to her parentage.

    2
  12. Erik Avatar
    Erik

    @joe: what would Trump need to do or say to make you think “huh, I was wrong, actually he is a fascist”?

    4
  13. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    I was not aware that Trump had a core. I assume Milley is speaking metaphorically.

    5
  14. Mat Lydy Avatar
    Mat Lydy

    @Fog: It’s a major problem. Vets don’t appreciate how much they’ve been targeted by foreign social media propaganda campaigns. Many never learned about NATO, the Fed, The Cold War… really much of anything about our country before signing up for Facebook. Young people aren’t even aware of how lousy Trump’s real world reputation was before the internet. Older republicans are clearly too inebriated, hateful, or corrupt to remember this guy was making macaroni art with Gary Busey, Meatloaf and other D list celebrities for a living on TV after driving all his real world businesses to into the ground.

    I’d hire a pregnant teenage migrant to do just about anything before considering him. He doesn’t even try to do anything but make things worse for everyone other than himself.

    2
  15. Michael Brown Avatar
    Michael Brown

    @charontwo: I can only hope white men have enjoyed advertising their deep seated inferiority complex to the entire world the last 8 years. It’s been a ton of fun, that’s for sure. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that when we send our people to government we certainly are not sending our best.
    
    So I doubt white “men” are going to cuck for Putin and this Orange Beta Pedo anymore but the damage is already done for our country whether republicans steal the election or not.

    You don’t have a country once half the body politic is actively trying to collapse the American government for the benefit of a foreign enemy. It actually doesn’t matter whether voters are aware of this treasonous outcome or not.
    
    Either way white men simply can not accomplish much of anything without the help of minorities, women, and children…. short of isolated bursts of gun violence.
    
    so ask yourself this… are you ever going to take shit from a loud-mouthed, know-nothing, white drunk who can’t barely wipe his own ass ever again?

    When you realize there’s no going back you realize its already over for the whites no matter what happens in politics. You can’t undo the damage that’s already been done.

    My guess is we’ll all starve the day we have to pick our own vegetables. Textbook mental pathology.

    1
  16. Jack Avatar
    Jack

    LOL. A general worried about his job record and rep.

    Trump was is office 4 years. Fascist results? But a propagandist media, an FBI, a Justice Dept and a CiA that crush people goes uncommented on

    You are such vacuous people.

  17. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Jack:

    Trump was is office 4 years. Fascist results?

    He did incite a riot that stormed the Capitol. And try to overturn an election. And is now promising to pardon those convicted for storming the capitol.

    It might not be from the Vichy region of France, or whatever, but it’s close enough for common parlance.

    10
  18. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    @joe:

    Here let me translate for you: Leftists don’t accept the fact that a Republican can be the President. Sure they can physically occupy the office, but they’re not really in control of the Executive Branch. Therefore, their policies don’t have to be carried out. If Republicans insist that yes they can be the President then they are a “fascist.” In fact, any opposition to the Left is “fascist.”

    I’ll take TROLLING OTB LIBS for $800, Alex.

    5
  19. Pete Milley Avatar
    Pete Milley

    @Jack: The problem, Jack is that you don’t care about focusing your attention to the Fascist results of the Trump presidency. If you cared about them at all you would recite them at nauseam to us. You just don’t care about:

    Bedlam at airports and a 7 country muslim flight ban.
    Separating children from their families at the border
    Delivering comprehensive border reform to his constituency
    Selling Goya Beans out of the Oval Office like a whore would
    Sucking Putins dick on TV and making women look more courageous than men.
    Denigrating our service members.
    Raping your mother in a Nordstroms changing room.
    Drawing outside of the lines of a hurricane map like a kindergartener.
    Ignoring a global pandemic, printing 2 trillion dollars so white boys can play video games in air condition at home while spiking inflation to 8% and giving white nail salon owners in Houston TX million dollar loans they don’t have to pay back.
    Killing a million people
    Killing an Iranian general
    Exporting inflation to S. America causing a migration crisis.
    Started a Trade war with China and adopted white socialism for soybean farmers in iowa
    Exacerbating the Fetanyl crisis
    Lying about his gay little tiny dick

    Jack just doesn’t care about this stuff is all. If he did, he’d be reminding us of these things instead of using his poor memory as a pretense that these things didn’t happen because he gave his attention span away to the internet over the course of these failed years.

    Jack had failed us, gentlemen. He just doesn’t know it because he’s only an internet troll.

    4
  20. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    @Jack: Yeah, the CIA has a pretty ugly history. Comparable to Trump’s when you really think about it.

    The justice department though?

    They don’t make the kind of mistakes Trump has floated through his whole life…. and there is the rub.

    This country had no appetite to prosecute white collar crime. You can’t wait for one of these white cuck’s to gain the presidency before trying to hold them to account. By then, the immorality of their ill-gotten gains are so metastasized that they’re mental state has devolved into the childish pathology of truly believing that blow drying your hair, putting on a suit and tie, and borrowing money at 0% is somehow much more virtuous than working.

    Does Jack even remember that real estate lenders and developers were never prosecuted for nearly destroying the full faith and credit of the United States dollar in 2007?

    What the fuck do you think ignoring a pandemic and printing two trillion dollars instead is gonna do?

    Republicans suck the teats of government and then shit in her face on the way out the door. Let the libtards clean it all up, right?

    1
  21. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Haha. Jack probably doesn’t remember Rush Limbaugh had emergency socialized heart surgery in Cuba either. I think he got the presidential medal of freedom for letting the Cubans save his life.

    Oh wait…I think he got it for never contributing to society and just talking shit about Cubans on the radio his whole life.

    Jack’s like Bill Murray in ground hogs day. He gets drunk and talks shit every night just to wake up the next day not knowing anything ever happened.

    Jack’s like the child who walks into the movie when it’s half way over…. Lol

    1
  22. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Haha. Jack probably doesn’t remember Rush Limbaugh had emergency socialized heart surgery in Cuba either. I think he got the presidential medal of freedom for letting the Cubans save his life.

    Oh wait…I think he got it for never contributing to society and just talking shit about Cubans on the radio his whole life.

    Jack’s like Bill Murray in ground hogs day. He gets drunk and talks shit every night just to wake up the next day not knowing anything ever happened.

    Jack’s like the child who walks into the movie when it’s half way over….

    1
  23. Aaron Avatar
    Aaron

    Republicans are too drunk and on drugs to make decisions for themselves let alone anyone else. They don’t even remember how they’re the ones who sold the country to China in the first place, put two wars on the credit card, ballooned the housing market with mortgage fraud, and destroyed our tax base.

    They literally don’t remember that this is what they have chosen to do with power.

    They don’t understand that all of these choices are why the country sucks now.

    They can’t look in the mirror anymore because we all have suffered the consequences of their failures in leadership.

    Don’t lead. Don’t follow. For the love of God, get the fuck out of the way…

    1
  24. Andrea P Avatar
    Andrea P

    @Aaron: Every Republican I’ve ever known has an alcohol or drug problem. Few have actually ever copped to it. They vote like that…

    1
  25. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    It doesn’t matter. There isn’t a universe where Milley wouldn’t be able to raise an army to depose MAGA if Trump pulls his little boy tricks again. I’m pretty sure 70% of the country will be able to put down a handful of demented septuagenarians who haven’t shot straight in decades.

    The only reason the Jan 6 riot got out of hand was because MAGA is such a pathetic joke no body actually expected the stupid drunks to treat our nation’s capital like a Seattle Starbucks bathroom.

    But we should have. No more benefit of the doubt for “white Christians” anymore. They’ve proven themselves violent and untrustworthy over and over again.

    Just think about how easy it will be to destabilize a people who have been living on conspiracy theories and their own fart smells for the last decade. Joint Chiefs & The Military will not let this country down again. Trump isn’t in office to stop them either.

    God Bless Milley, Mattis, McMaster, McCain from the bottom of my broken little republican heart.

    2
  26. Dennis Avatar
    Dennis

    @Pete Milley: He’ll turn the dollar into used toilet paper if the military actually let him steal the country away. Probably going to happen anyway considering all of the borrowing and spending the Republicans have done. Ruined the country and blamed it all on the women and children. Unmanly.

    1
  27. Doreen Avatar
    Doreen

    @Pete Milley: Haha. Great post. Jack probably knows this is the short version of the list.

    1
  28. Holly Avatar
    Holly

    @charontwo: Title looks good now, but URL is still off

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