Donald Trump told his chief adviser at the White House that he would like to have generals like those who worked for Adolf Hitler, saying they were “totally loyal” to the leader of the Nazi regime. The information is contained in a book about the 45th American president that is about to be released.
“Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump said to John Kelly, his chief of staff, putting an expletive before the question, according to an excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in the White House” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, published online by The New Yorker magazine this Monday (8). Baker is the chief correspondent for the New York Times at the White House, and Glasser is on the New Yorker’s newsroom staff.
The excerpt portrays Trump as deeply frustrated with his top military officers, whom he considered to be insufficiently loyal or obedient to him. The authors write that in the conversation with John Kelly, which took place years before the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the chief of staff told Trump that the German generals “made three attempts to kill Hitler and almost succeeded.”
Trump reportedly rejected the idea, apparently ignoring World War II history, which Kelly, a retired four-star general, knew all too well.
“‘No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,’ replied the president,” according to the book’s authors. “In his version of the story, Third Reich generals had been completely subservient to Hitler. That was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump there were no such American generals, but the president was determined to put the proof of idea.”
Much of the excerpt focuses on General Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the country’s military commander in chief – under Trump. When the president offered him the job, Milley told him, “I’ll do what you ask.” But he didn’t take long to see the president in a negative light.
The general’s frustration with Trump reached its peak on June 1, 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters filled Lafayette Square, near the White House. Trump demanded that armed forces be dispatched to get them out, but Milley and other top aides refused to do so. Trump, according to the book, would have reacted by shouting: “You are all losers!” “Turning to Milley, Trump said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something?'” the authors write.
After the National Guard and police drove the protesters out of the plaza, Milley briefly accompanied the president and other aides, walking through the empty plaza so that Trump could be photographed in front of a church on the other side.
The authors said Milley later considered his decision to join the president “an error in judgment that would haunt him forever, a ‘moment like the [de Saulo] on the road to Damascus’, as he would later say”.
A week after that episode, Milley wrote – but did not deliver – a letter of resignation in a strongly critical tone, accusing the president whom he served of politicizing the military, “ruining the international order”, failing to value diversity and embracing diversity. tyranny, dictatorship and extremism that members of the Armed Forces are sworn to fight.
“I believe you are doing my country serious and irreparable harm,” the general wrote in the letter, which had not been revealed before and was published in full by the New Yorker. Milley claimed that Trump did not honor those who fought fascism and the Nazis in World War II.
“It is clear to me now that you do not understand this world order,” Milley wrote. “You don’t understand what prompted the war. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles we fight against. And I can’t condone that.”
But, according to the book’s authors, Milley eventually decided to stay in office in order to ensure that the military acted as a bulwark against an increasingly out-of-control president.
“I’ll just fight him,” Milley told his team, according to the excerpt published in the New Yorker. “The challenge, in his view, was to stop Trump from doing more harm, while acting in a manner consistent with his obligation to carry out the orders of his Commander-in-Chief. prison, let them go on.'”
In addition to the revelations about Mark Milley, the book excerpt provides new details about Trump’s interactions with his top military and national security advisers and documents drastic efforts by the former president’s most senior advisers to prevent a domestic or international crisis in weeks. after Trump was defeated in his re-election effort.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has never publicly contested Trump’s wild claims about the election and has rarely criticized him since. But, speaking privately, he dismissed allegations of fraud made by Trump and his aides.
On the night of November 9, 2020, after the news media declared Joe Biden’s victory, Pompeo called Milley and asked to see him, according to the book. In a conversation around the general’s kitchen table, Pompeo was frank about what he thought of the people around the president.
“‘The freaks have taken over,'” he reportedly told Milley Pompeo, who, according to the book’s authors, out of the spotlight quickly accepted that the election was over and refused to overturn its result.
” ‘He was totally against it,’ recalled a senior State Department official. Pompeo cynically justified the shocking contrast between what he said in public and in the private sphere. ‘Towards the end, it was also important for him not to be fired, to continue there until the bitter end,’ said the senior adviser,” according to the book.
The authors detail what they describe as “an extraordinary arrangement” made between Pompeo and Milley in the weeks after the election to have daily morning phone calls with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in an effort to ensure the president does not take dangerous steps. .
“Pompeo and Milley soon began calling these calls the ‘prepare for plane landing,'” the authors write. ” ‘Our task is to get this plane to land safely and carry out the peaceful transfer of power on January 20th,’ Milley told his team. ‘That is our obligation to this nation.’ But there was a problem. ‘Both engines are down and the landing gear is grounded. We are in an emergency situation.'”
Milley is not the only senior official who has considered resigning in response to the president’s actions, the authors write.
The book excerpt details private conversations between members of the president’s national security team, discussing what to do if he tried to take actions they felt they could not tolerate. The authors report that Milley consulted with Robert Gates, a former secretary of defense and former director of the CIA.
The advice he heard from Gates would have been short and blunt: “Keep the bosses in tune with your thinking and make it clear to the White House that if you leave, everyone else will, so the White House knows it’s not just about firing Mark Milley. . The entire Joint Staff would resign at the same time.”
The excerpt makes it clear that Trump didn’t always get the ass-kicking subordinates he craved. In an exchange in the Oval Office, Trump asked General Paul Selva, an Air Force officer and vice president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what he thought of the president’s desire for a military parade to be held in the national capital on the day. 4th of July.
Selva’s response, undisclosed so far, was straightforward and, according to the book’s authors, not what the president wanted to hear.
” ‘I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,’ said the general. “Portugal was a dictatorship, and military parades were made to show the people who had the cannons. In this country we don’t do that.’ And he added, ‘It’s not who we are.'”
