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General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared President Trump would start a war with Iran as he tried to cling to power, writes Susan Glasser in The New Yorker.
Go back: Iran has been brought up on several occasions in White House meetings with Trump in the months following the election, and Milley has repeatedly opposed a strike, Glasser reports:
Milley … feared Trump would start a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iranian hawks around him and was close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also urged the administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do that, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley was saying.
Between the lines: It is amazing that Milley allows these detailed accounts of his thought to be reported while he is still in office.
- The WashPost Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in their book “I Alone Can Fix It”, published Tuesday, that Milley saw Trump’s post-election behavior as a “Reichstag moment … the Führer’s gospel”.
Milley is considering resigning after the Lafayette Square photo shoot on June 1, 2020, and told his assistants he was “ready to be fired, or even court martialed,” Glasser reports.
- Two days later, in the Pentagon briefing room, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced he did not support invoking the insurgency law against protesters and said he had tried to “remain apolitical”.
A little after, Glasser writes: “Esper, Milley and Centcom Commander Frank Mackenzie were to attend a White House meeting on Afghanistan.
Rabid Trump turned Esper on before Milley could even sit down. The president went “apes — t” on Esper, Milley told associates, one of the worst such bores he’s ever seen. Trump would continue to fire Esper days after losing the 2020 election.
Keep reading.
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