Category: MarkMilley

New Harris ad shows GOP officials shunning ‘wannabe dictator’ Trump

Posted on by Oliver Willis

 The Harris-Walz campaign on Monday released a new ad highlighting major Republican figures who have worked with Donald Trump that have now shunned him and oppose his presidential campaign.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” is set to run on Fox News Channel and in West Palm Beach, Florida (where Trump’s home/resort Mar-A-Lago is located) ahead of the upcoming presidential debate.

YouTube Video

Included in the ad are quotes from many who were part of Trump’s first administration: former Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and General Mark Milley. 

“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said. 

When asked if the nation’s secrets are safe with Trump, Esper answered, “No, I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk.”

Bolton states that “Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump.”

The ad follows recent announcements from former Rep. Liz Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney—both prominent Republicans—that they would be voting for Harris in the election, citing the threat that Trump represents to democracy.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again,” Cheney said in a statement.

Trump infamously called on Pence to subvert the U.S. Constitution following their joint loss to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump posted on X, formerly Twitter, “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

Pence declined to follow Trump’s demand and instead followed federal law by voting to certify the election results. Trump then encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol, for which he was later impeached (for a second time).

The new ad also highlights the rupture in the relationship between Trump and Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump. Milley and the other heads of America’s military branches (Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard) sent out a statement in January 2021 condemning the Jan. 6 attack.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley

In a 2023 speech excerpted in the commercial, Milley warned of “wannabe dictators” in what was widely seen as a condemnation of Trump.

“We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country, we don’t take an oath to a tribe, we don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator,” Milley said. “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America—and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

As part of his campaign, Trump has said he would use the power of the presidency in a second term to round up and mass deport undocumented immigrants. Trump has also said he would seek retribution against his political enemies.

Since being sworn into office in 2021, Biden has used the presidency to advocate for freedom and has warned about the autocratic threat from Trump and the Republican Party. In his July address from the Oval Office announcing his decision to step down from the presidential race, Biden said the move was motivated by his support for democracy.

“The great thing about America is, here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands, the idea of America lies in your hands,” Biden said.

“Freedom” has been the central theme of Harris’ campaign since she took over from Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. She has taken Trump to task for his decisions that directly led to Roe v. Wade being overturned and abortion rights being upended, as well as his actions to subvert democracy.

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August, at the same site where Trump accepted the Republican nomination a few weeks before, Harris summarized the campaign’s theme.

“We are witnessing across our nation a full-on attack on hard-fought, hard-won, fundamental freedoms and rights across our nation, like the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride,” Harris said.

Sign here: Harris taps Tim Walz. Now let’s defeat Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot. 

Joint Chiefs of Staff made plans to resign rather than obey Trump’s ‘gospel of the Führer’

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

Previously released excerpts from a new book by Washington Post reporters indicated tension between members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House. However, additional material released on Wednesday night by CNN takes this to a new and terrifying level. According to Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, senior military officers were so concerned that Donald Trump might drag the military into a coup, that they developed a plan to resign, one by one, rather than accept an order to take part in such a plot.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley appears to have been particularly concerned about the idea he might simply refuse to leave office, and that in his final days in power, Trump would use the military to carry out his schemes. Milley, who took part in Trump’s Bible-waving stroll across Lafayette Square, was disturbed at how Trump inserted sycophants into key roles at the Pentagon following the election and saw this as a sign of an upcoming attempt to maintain power at the point of a gun.

According to the authors, Milley grew so concerned that he discussed the possibility not just with his friends, but with other generals and with members of Congress. "They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed," Milley told his staff. "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."

The book also indicates that Milley had specific concerns about Jan. 6. Trump’s calls for supporters to come to D.C. for a “wild” event, and intelligence showing that militia members were planning to attend in numbers, left Milley fretting Trump was deliberately “stoking unrest” and that he was trying to create an incident that would justify the use of the Insurrection Act along with military force.

“This is a Reichstag moment.”

Seeing Trump as a “classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” Milley became convinced he’d seen this story before. With Trump calling for a “Million MAGA March” following his loss in November, Milley feared it “could be the modern American equivalent of 'brownshirts in the streets.” In addition to referencing incidents in which Nazis had used violence to bring Adolf Hitler to power, Milley supposedly referenced the incident that Hitler had staged, then leveraged as a means of using violence against his enemies. "This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer."

One of MIlley’s colleagues, quoted anonymously, confirmed to him that “this is all real” and warned the general "What they are trying to do here is overturn the government. ... You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff."

The revelations out of the book show a last minute scramble at the White House, with Trump clutching at every conspiracy theory and working to put in place those who might go along with a scheme to defy the outcome of the election. According to the authors, Milley was instrumental in preventing Trump from replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, with Milley regarding both of those positions as pivotal to the success or failure of any coup.

 According to the book, Trump’s spiral into darkness was so severe that even Mike Pompeo came to Milley for a “heart to heart” talk in which he complained “you know the crazies are taking over.”

The incidents described in the book go beyond disturbing. They describe a nation well beyond the brink, with a White House actively working to position assets for an end of democracy and military leadership developing a pushback that was not at all certain of success. The revelations are terrifying enough that “shocking” seems an all-too-insubstantial term.

But there is one thing that isn’t completely clear. Though the article states that the book developed from over a hundred interviews conducted by Leonnig and Rucker, it doesn’t make clear when this information was known to them. If Washington Post reporters were aware in the final days of Trump’s occupation of the White House, that he was plotting to keep control of the nation, shouldn’t the nation have been made aware? And if there were reports that top military officials were convinced that Trump’s actions following the election were intended to generate violence, shouldn’t that information have been provided to case managers in Trump’s second impeachment?

There are a number of upcoming books on the final awful days of Trump, and the revelations will continue. But the first question these books need to answer is why are we just hearing about this now?