Trump’s top general calls ex-president ‘fascist to the core’

Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States.

Milley, a decorated military officer who became a target for right-wing scorn after it became known that he expressed concerns over Trump’s mental stability in the wake of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, is described by journalist Bob Woodward in his new book, War, as incredibly alarmed at the prospect of a second Trump term in the White House. The Independent obtained a copy ahead of the book’s October 15 release date.

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a riotous mob of the then-president’s supporters, Woodward writes that Milley insisted on securing a meeting with the then-newly-minted attorney general, Merrick Garland, to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.

According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was “deeply convinced” that Trump remained “a danger to the country” even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.

But the Army veteran expressed even more strident concerns to Woodward himself at a March 2023 meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.

Woodward writes that when he approached Milley at a reception, the general spoke first and told him: “We gotta talk.”

He told the journalist that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as the former president.

He asked: “Do you realize, do you see what this man is?”

Milley, who had been a source for Woodward’s last book, Peril, said he’d “glimpsed” Trump’s true nature when they previously spoke during the writing of that 2021 release, but he said he now knew exactly what the ex-president is.

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” he said.

“A fascist to the core,” Milley repeated.

The general’s private comments to Woodward, which have not been previously reported, were echoed in cutting remarks Milley made publicly at his September 2023 retirement ceremony, when, without mentioning Trump’s name, he appeared to take a swipe at the ex-president.

In the impassioned speech, he defiantly said the US military is “unique” among the world’s fighting forces because it does not profess fealty to any one person.

““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,” he said.

Apparently referencing Trump, he immediately added: “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,” he said.