Top general regrets walking with Trump
WASHINGTON — The country’s top military official apologized Thursday for taking part in President Donald Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op after authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters.
“I should not have been there,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Milley’s first public remarks since Trump’s June 1 photo op, in which federal authorities forcibly dispersed peaceful protesters so that the president could hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, are certain to anger the White House. Trump has spent the days since the May 25 death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis taking increasingly tougher stances against the growing movement for change across the country.
The back-and-forth between Trump and the Pentagon in recent days is evidence of the deepest civilmilitary divide since the Vietnam War — except this time, military leaders, after halting steps in the beginning, are positioning themselves firmly with those calling for change.
Associates of Milley’s said he considered resigning, but he decided not to.
Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square, current and former military leaders said, has started a critical moment of reckoning in the military. Milley addressed the issue head-on.
“As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from,” Milley said. He said he had been angry about “the senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd” and repeated his opposition to Trump’s suggestions that federal troops be deployed nationwide to quell protests.
Milley’s friends said that for the past 10 days, he had agonized about appearing — in the combat fatigues he wears every day to work — behind Trump during the walk, an act that critics said gave a stamp of military approval to the hard-line tactics used to clear the protesters.
During his speech Thursday, Milley, after expressing his disgust over Floyd’s death, spoke at length about the issue of race, both in the military and in civilian society.
“The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African Americans,” he said. “What we are seeing is the long shadow of our original sin in Jamestown 401 years ago, liberated by the Civil War, but not equal in the eyes of the law until 100 years later in 1965.”
He called on the military to address issues of systemic racism in the armed forces, where 43 percent of the enlisted troops are people of color but only a tiny handful are in senior leadership ranks.
In the days after the photo op, Milley told Trump that he was angered by what had happened. The two had already exchanged sharp words June 1, when Milley engaged the president in a heated discussion in the Oval Office over whether to send active-duty troops into the streets, according to people in the room.
Trump acquiesced, but he has continued to hold out the threat of sending active-duty troops.
Last week, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper called a news conference to announce that he, too, opposed invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops across the country to quell protests, a line that a number of U.S. military officials said they would not cross.
The president, aides say, has been furious with both Esper and Milley since then. Defense Department officials say they are unsure how long either will last in their respective jobs.
In the days since the walk across Lafayette Square, Milley has taken pains to mitigate the damage. Two days afterward, he released a letter that forcefully reminded the troops that their military was supposed to protect the right to freedom of speech. He added to his letter, some of it straying outside the margins: “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America — we will stay true to that oath and the American people.”