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- A new book details Trump’s attempt to cling to power after the 2020 election.
- At one point, senior military officials believed Trump was planning a coup, according to the book.
- They would have discussed the mass resignation if they received illegal orders.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other senior military officials feared President Donald Trump was planning a coup after his defeat in the 2020 election, and discussed resigning if they were given orders illegal or dangerous, according to a new book.
The book – “I Alone Can Fix It” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker – details Trump’s attempt to cling to power after last year’s election. CNN released excerpts from the book on Wednesday.
According to the snippets, Milley discussed the possibility of a coup with lawmakers, friends and senior officials.
“They can try, but they’re not going to be successful,” Milley told his assistants, 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 other officials, who have not been named, have discussed stepping down one by one rather than carrying out illegal orders, according to the book.
“It was sort of a Saturday night massacre in reverse,” Leonnig and Rucker wrote, according to CNN, in reference to the massive White House resignations under President Richard Nixon as the Watergate scandal unfolded in 1973 .
The date of Milley’s discussion with officials was unclear, but according to the book, one of their concerns was Trump’s decision to replace senior officials in the Defense and Justice Departments, including the then Defense Secretary Mark Esper by die-hard loyalists.
Trump announced on November 9 that Esper had been “fired” and in an interview a few days earlier Esper warned that if he was to be replaced it would be “a real yes. And then God help us.”
According to the book, Milley became increasingly concerned with Trump’s behavior leading up to Jan.6, believing he was deliberately seeking to stir up unrest with his bogus allegations of voter fraud to invoke the insurgency law and summon the ‘army.
“What they’re trying to do here is overthrow the government,” an anonymous friend of Milley told Milley, according to the authors. “This is all real, man. You’re one of the few guys who stands between us and really bad stuff.
According to the book, Milley was so worried that he even compared Trump’s behavior to that of Adolf Hitler after the Nazi dictator used the 1933 Reichstag fire to declare a national emergency and seize authoritarian powers. .
Insider has reached out to Trump’s office for comment on the book.
Milley was criticized last summer when he accompanied Trump for a controversial photoshoot in Lafayette Square after he was forcibly evicted from anti-racist protesters. Milley wore his combat fatigues as he marched alongside the president, and later apologized for breaking rules prohibiting military officials from participating in political events.
But in recent weeks, Milley has been targeted by the former president and his allies after defending in Congress the US military’s policy of teaching members about racism in the United States.
During the congressional hearing, he declared his own commitment to understanding “white rage” and the motivations of far-right insurgents on Capitol Hill.
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