The new book Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reveals that when the election of November 2020 was driving president Donald Trump into highly erratic behavior, Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, called his Chinese counterpart and assured the Chinese general that if America were going to mount a surprise nuclear attack, Milley would call the Chinese general in advance and warn him.

Headlines on the left have praised this as heroism. Headlines on the right have condemned it as treason. But there’s a story behind Milley’s phone calls that none of the headlines are telling you.

Before and after the election, President Trump’s secretary of defense, Mark Esper, saw that Trump’s behavior was making the Chinese nervous… nervous that President Trump might try to keep himself in power by mounting a surprise nuclear attack on China. The Chinese were so rattled that they could easily have been forced to contemplate mounting a preemptive surprise nuclear attack against us.

So Axios reports, Esper “directed his policy office to issue a backchannel message to the Chinese to reassure them the U.S. had no intention of seeking a military confrontation.”

In line with that order, Trump’s top military man, Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, called his Chinese counterpart and assured the Chinese general that America was not going to start a nuclear war and was not going to mount a surprise attack. Then, when the January 6th riot at the capitol made the Chinese even more nervous, Milley is reported to have called again.

According to the Washington Post, Milley said that “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

How you see this revelation depends on which media bubble you live in. If you’re in the Fox, Newsmax, and Breitbart bubble, Milley’s promise to warn the Chinese of a surprise attack was treason. Former president Trump calls Milley a traitor. Marco Rubio, calls for Milley’s resignation. Texas Republican congressman Ronny Jackson says that Milley should be in prison. And Pennsylvania congressman Scott Perry accuses Milley of being the new Benedict Arnold.

But there’s the opposite perception in the CNN, New York Times universe. President Trump’s niece Mary Trump, a psychologist, says that President Trump is the real villain. He is mentally ill. She says that he has antisocial personality disorder. She also says that former president Trump is a fascist and a threat to America’s democracy.

Republican Paul Ryan apparently agrees about the mental illness. When he was speaker of the house, he went so far as to study how to deal with a person who has narcissistic personality disorder.

On January 8th, two days after the capitol riot, Nancy Pelosi called General Milley concerned about President Trump’s access to the nuclear codes. Pelosi said that Trump is crazy and that his January 6th riot proved it. Milley said he agreed.

On my YouTube channel back in 2020, I pointed out that President Trump was incapable of accepting his election defeat. So he took a series of steps to pull off what his own head of the CIA called “a coup,” a coup that would keep him in power despite his election loss.

Advisors like Michael Flynn and General Thomas Mcinerney urged President Trump to declare a state of emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act,?? impose martial law, and have a second election run by the military. Trump made moves to accomplish something of the sort by firing defense secretary Mark Esper and by packing the top positions in the Pentagon with people who couldn’t do the Pentagon job but who would do anything President Trump told them to.

And President Trump and his team set up the January 6th rally to stop the Constitutionally ordained, ceremonial certification of the election by Congress. Donald Trump Jr signaled that you were welcome to be violent at the rally when he emailed and tweeted that it was going to be a “wild time.”

In other words, President Donald Trump was trying to foment an insurrection.

To folks on the left, Trump was not only insane, he was capable of starting a nuclear war with China that would kill millions of Americans just to keep himself in office.

To the left, Mark Milley is a hero. A hero who lived up to his oath to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. In the words of White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, Milley “is a patriot.”

To Trump loyalists, on the other hand, Mark Milley has betrayed his country.

References:

Jonathan Swan, Mark Milley’s crisis, Axios, September 15, 2020, https://www.axios.com/mark-milley-woodward-trump-crisis-bb8a80b1-3e3a-492b-934a-99825cc6ef7f.html

Bob Woodward, Robert Costa, Peril, Simon & Schuster 2021 https://www.amazon.com/Peril-Bob-Woodward-ebook/dp/B098PDDZW3/ref=sr_1_1

Howard Bloom, Coup, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdYph70bgU