Miranda Devine
IF you believe the latest Bob Woodward book, the United States has lost civilian control of its military — unless you count Nancy Pelosi who seems to have been in control of everything since she became speaker in 2019 with the single-minded goal of bringing down Donald Trump.
Everything has gone downhill since, and most dangerously at the Pentagon where a cohort of woke generals fell under Pelosi’s malign spell.
That’s the only way you can understand how Gen. Mark Milley could have become so deranged that he cast himself as the hero of a “Seven Days in May”-style fever dream in which only he could save the nation from Trump launching nuclear war with China to stay in office.
It’s an insane scenario, a left-wing equivalent of the most farfetched QAnon conspiracies.
But this is what is claimed in the Woodward book, titled “Peril,” coauthored by Robert Costa. So alarmed was the tightly wound general about what he imagined Trump might do in the weeks before and after last year’s election that he made “secret calls” to his counterpart in China promising to warn him if the president ordered an attack.
A lot of Republicans are demanding that Milley be tried for treason, after The Washington Post published extracts from “Peril” this week. But a lunatic asylum might be more appropriate.
A statement Wednesday from the Pentagon confirmed that Milley had made the calls to Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng in October and January but denied that they were secret or that he was usurping presidential authority.
Yet Trump says he didn’t know about them, and neither did Chris Miller, the acting defense secretary in January, who told Fox News he “did not and would not ever authorize” the general to make such calls.
It’s clear that Milley, or people authorized by him, leaked details of his delusional derring-do to a number of authors because he is proud of his actions. His lack of shame bodes ill for the country if he remains the nation’s highest-ranking military offiso cer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The botched withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan over which he presided was bad enough. What’s next?
The most disturbing part of the Milley story that emerges from at least three accounts of the Trump
presidency vying for bookshelf space this fall is Pelosi’s malign influence.
The general seemed to treat her as his commander in chief. Pelosi, who was engaged in a blood feud with Trump that had sent her batty, manipulated and bullied Milley.
A transcript of a call with Pelosi two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, obtained by the “Peril” authors, has her ranting at Milley about Trump’s access to nuclear weapons.
“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? . . .
“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”
Milley reportedly responded: “Madam Speaker. I agree with you on everything.”
After Pelosi’s hysterical call, he phoned China.
“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years,” Milley reportedly told him. “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time.”
He also convened a meeting of top military officials in the Pentagon that afternoon and insisted they inform him if the president called about any military actions.
It wasn’t his place to insert himself in the chain of command. He was just a military adviser to the president, with no role in commanding troops.
But by then he was a fully paid-up member of the Trump Derangement cult in Washington.
You could trace the madness of Milley to the day in June 2020 when he posed with Trump outside St. John’s church in Lafayette Square near the White House.
The country was convulsed by anti-cop riots and Democrats, seeing political advantage in the chaos, were obstructing Trump’s efforts to contain the violence. The historic church had been firebombed in riots ferocious that the president and his family had to be whisked into a bunker for their safety.
Dozens of US Park Police and Secret Service officers were injured. The next day the Park Police cleared the square so contractors could erect extra security fencing around the park.
Trump’s photo with a Bible outside the church surrounded by members of his administration was a stunt, but it also was important to reassure the nation that the president was in command. It was frightening how close the insurgents had come to the White House.
But the media narrative pushed by candidate Joe Biden and Pelosi was that Trump had tear-gassed peaceful protesters and driven them out of the square for a photo-op. This was a lie, as the inspector general of the Department of the Interior stated in a forensic report into the incident a year later.
But Pelosi was deranged, screaming over the phone at Milley, vilifying federal law enforcement as “storm troopers” and using her favorite fatist slurs against Attorney General Bill Barr, whom she called a “blob” and a “henchman.”
Milley took her critique to heart and made a pathetic video apology that he said was on behalf of an “apolitical military.”
“My presence in that moment and in that environment created the perception of the military involved in politics.”
What a joke.
This is the same Milley who compared Trump to Hitler and called Trump’s supporters “brownshirts.”
In one account, Milley went to Biden’s inauguration and told Michelle Obama, “No one has a bigger smile today than I do.”
Milley reportedly considered resigning because Trump asked him to join him for that photo-op.
But he didn’t resign when Biden insisted he abandon Bagram Air Base and set in motion the worst military disaster in half a century.
How can we allow someone with such bad judgment to remain chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ?
Milley’s delusions of grandeur could get us all killed. For real, as Joe Biden likes to say.