Military chief regrets walk with Trump past park protest
WASHINGTON — Army Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, added to the already extraordinary tension between the Pentagon and President Donald Trump on Thursday, declaring he’d been wrong to stride in uniform with Trump past protesters who had been cleared from Lafayette Square to a photo op at a church.
Milley said his presence in combat fatigues amid protests over racial injustice “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
“I should not have been there,” the Joint Chiefs chairman said in remarks to a National Defense University commencement ceremony.
Milley’s statement risked the wrath of a president sensitive to anything hinting of criticism of events he has staged. Pentagon leaders’ relations with the White House already were tense after a disagreement last week over Trump’s threat to use federal troops to quell civil unrest triggered by George Floyd’s death in police custody.
After Defense Secretary Mark Esper knocked down that idea of using activeduty troops against American citizens, Trump castigated him in a face-to-face meeting. And the president had blistering criticism for his first defense secretary, Gen. Jim Mattis, after Mattis condemned Trump’s Lafayette Square action.
The public uproar following Floyd’s death has created multiple layers of tension between Trump and senior Pentagon officials. In yet another dispute, Esper and Milley let it be known through spokesmen this week that they were open to a “bipartisan discussion” of whether 10 Army bases named for Confederate Army officers should be renamed as a gesture dissociating the military from the racist legacy of the Civil War.
On Wednesday, Trump said he would never allow the names to be changed, catching some in the Pentagon by surprise.
The Marine Corps last week moved ahead with a ban on public displays of the Confederate Army battle flag on its bases, and the Navy this week said it plans a similar ban for its bases, ships and planes. Trump has not commented publicly on those moves, which do not require White House or congressional approval.
The president’s June 1 walk through the park to pose with a Bible at a church came after authorities used pepper spray and flash bangs to clear the historic square and surrounding streets of largely peaceful protesters demonstrating in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. Milley’s comments Thursday were his first public statements about the walk with Trump, which the White House has hailed as a presidential “leadership moment” akin to Winston Churchill inspecting damage from German bombs in London during World War II.
Milley said Thursday, “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
“As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
After protesters were cleared away, Trump led an entourage that included Milley, Esper, Attorney General William Barr and others to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he held up a Bible for photographers and then returned to the White House.
Esper has not said publicly that he erred by being with Trump at that moment. However, he told a news conference last week that when they left the White House he thought they were going to inspect damage in the square and at the church and mingle with National Guard troops in the area.