Gen. Milley’s motives

The president is commander in chief and the military is subservient to the president. But what is undiscussed in your editorial is whether a rage-filled president, perhaps mentally unhinged as the speaker of the House, third in line of presidential succession, is reported to have said, is a competent commander in chief. The founders never anticipated a defeated president going rogue and entreating his vice president to cancel the Electoral College tabulation that finalizes the quadrennial presidential sweepstakes. And the founders never anticipated that a defeated president would, with a wink and a nod, encourage his supporters to delay the tabulation by attacking the Capitol. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was in uncharted and heretofore unanticipated territory when Donald Trump accosted our constitutional prerogatives. The speaker of the House, convinced that Mr. Trump was “crazy,” conferred with Gen. Milley and asked him to secure our nuclear weapons because of a fear that the defeated president would do great harm to our nation and, perhaps, to international order. Mr. Trump disdained the legal and peaceful course for a defeated candidate and attempted an insurrection. Gen. Milley was the patriot, not the defeated president.

— Paul Bloustein, Cincinnati, Ohio