According to a shocking claim made in a new book, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a “pair of secret phone calls” to his counterpoint in China to undermine then President Trump.
In their new book, “Peril,” journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa made the claim revealing that the general betrayed not only the Trump administration – but his entire country.
“Woodward and Costa write that after January 6, Milley ‘felt no absolute certainty that the military could control or trust Trump and believed it was his job as the senior military officer to think the unthinkable and take any and all necessary precautions,’” according to a CNN writeup on the same report, that added that Milley thought Trump might “wag the dog” — provoke “a conflict domestically or abroad.”
“In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike,” the pair of reporters noted.
“One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021.”
According to Woodward and Costa, it seems Milley took his treason a step further, communicating sensitive information to a Chinese general and even suggesting that he would warn China ahead of time if he discovered that Trump planned to attack.
The first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack. That belief, the authors write, was based on tensions over military exercises in the South China Sea, and deepened by Trump’s rhetoric toward China.
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
The CNN writeup also noted that Milley had a conversation with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who, herself, seemed prepared to assume power.
“Milley received a blunt phone call from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to the book. Woodward and Costa exclusively obtained a transcript of the call, during which Milley tried to reassure Pelosi that the nuclear weapons were safe,” per CNN. “Pelosi pushed back.”
“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?” Pelosi reportedly told the General. “You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”
Milley, the authors wrote, told Pelosi that he “agreed.”
Former President Donald Trump tore into Milley over the bombshell report that the general had committed treason.
Trump responded to the news in a statement, writing, “If the story of ‘Dumba**’ General Mark Milley, the same failed leader who engineered the worst withdrawal from a country, Afghanistan, in U.S. history, leaving behind many dead and wounded soldiers, many American citizens, and $85 Billion worth of the newest and most sophisticated Military equipment in the world, and our Country’s reputation, is true, then I assume he would be tried for TREASON in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the President’s back and telling China that he would be giving them notification ‘of an attack.’”
“Can’t do that!” Trump continued. “The good news is that the story is Fake News concocted by a weak and ineffective General together with two authors who I refused to give an interview to because they write fiction, not fact. Actions should be taken immediately against Milley, and better generals in our Military, of which we have many, should get involved so that another Afghanistan disaster never happens again. Remember, I was the one who took out 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. Milley said it couldn’t be done!”
“For the record, I never even thought of attacking China—and China knows that,” Trump concluded. “The people that fabricated the story are sick and demented, and the people who print it are just as bad. In fact, I’m the only President in decades who didn’t get the U.S. into a war—a well known fact that is seldom reported.”
A former senior U.S. official also slammed Milley in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that “it was dangerous for Mark Milley to be doing freelance diplomacy on China without involving any of the other senior officials dealing with China at the time.”
“Milley was making these phone calls at a time when the U.S. government was in the middle of very complicated discussions with and actions against the PRC. For him to take this sort of action without any interagency coordination is astonishing,” the official continued.
“The risk is [Milley] could have caused the Chinese to miscalculate and take some sort of diplomatic, economic or military action with far ranging consequences, because he was giving the wrong signal, having no understanding of the context in which he was making the call.”
Author: Dennis Izzard
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