According to a new book, on the day Joe Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley reportedly told former First Lady Michelle Obama, “No one has a bigger smile today than I do. You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
Those alleged statements were quoted by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in their upcoming book, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” according to CNN, which added, “Rucker and Leonnig interviewed more than 140 sources for the book, though most were given anonymity to speak candidly to reconstruct events and dialogue.”
The authors state that Vice President Kamala Harris told Milley after she was sworn in, ‘We all know what you and some others did. Thank you.” The authors quote Milley saying, “Thank God Almighty, we landed the ship safely.”
The Daily Wire reported on Thursday:
Milley, who has been widely criticized for being “woke,” claimed that Trump was preaching “the gospel of the Führer” when he contested the results of the 2020 election and claimed that Trump had led the U.S. to the brink of its own “Reichstag moment,” a reference to an incident in 1933 that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler used to consolidate political power in Germany.
New York Magazine reported:
… the general’s worries grew rapidly as the president plunged the nation into chaos following Election Day. Seven days later, Milley got a call from “an old friend” with an explicit warning that Trump and his allies were trying to “overturn the government.” Milley was confident that any attempts by Trump to hold on to power would be thwarted, because the military wouldn’t go along. “They may try, but they’re not going to fucking succeed,” he told aides. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with guns.”
Milley was nominated by former President Barack Obama to become the Army’s chief of staff in 2015. Defense One reported at the time:
Milley’s rise to top Army officer came quickly. He is commander of U.S. Forces Command, a post he’s held only since last August. Previously, for a little more than one year he was the deputy commander of the Afghanistan war and ran the international coalition’s day-to-day operations. Prior, Milley has extensive command experience of units like the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, and was deputy commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division when deployed to Afghanistan. He has seen combat in Panama and Iraq, as well. As a colonel, Milley was a military assistant to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“Detractors say he sometimes domineered those around him, allowed his temper to erupt and, according to another former official, ‘has an ego the size of the Empire State Building,’” The Washington Post reported in late June.