by Frontpagemag.com
Why is Mark Milley still in command of the U.S. military?
In this latest video commentary, Fox News' Tucker Carlson wonders why the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a leftist extremist named Gen. Mark Milley -- is still in command of the United States military, despite embracing Marxist Critical Race Theory, making authoritarian comments such as smearing Donald Trump and his millions of supporters as the moral equivalent of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Brownshirts, and suggesting that the former president should be removed from office in a military coup.
Carlson calls for Milley's removal from office. Check out the video [editor: the video was apparently removed] and transcript below:
Transcript:
Tucker Carlson: Good evening, and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Here's a story we'd completely forgotten about, because there are so many. Just before last November's presidential election, two former army officers wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man called Mark Milley, who still has the job. The letter became public. It was published on a left-wing blog called Defense One and, within minutes, was all over the internet.
The authors of the letter had a direct order from Mark Milley, who, strictly speaking, did not report to them. "If Donald Trump refuses to leave office," the letter began, "the United States military must remove him by force. And you must give that order." You must remove the President by force. That was a little shocking; what country is this?
Even the usual power-mad partisans in the news media began to wonder if that was really a good idea. Slate.com, of all places, reminded its readers that no matter how orange Donald Trump might be, military coups generally turn out to be unwise. The Pentagon had to go on the record as opposing it, too. The rest of us could keep civilian control of our government. And what a relief that was.
Within days, the story just kind of receded, another weird footnote to a weird four years. But if you paused it and thought about it for a second, you had to wonder: Where did that idea even come from? Did two former U.S. military officers really just suggest removing the President of the United States by force of arms? Since when do American military officers talk like that or think like that? And do a lot of them have views like that?
We pushed that consideration from our minds. But we shouldn't have. Now we know that Mark Milley himself is the sort of person who considers military coups entirely within the realm of possibility.
A new book written by reporters at The Washington Post who cover Mark Milley reveals that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a legitimate extremist. He's the last person you would give power to if you could possibly help it. In the book, Milley describes Donald Trump and the millions of people who supported him as the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler. As thousands of Trump supporters peacefully gathered in Washington for what they assumed was a constitutionally protected political rally, the kind we've had for hundreds of years, shortly after the election; Milley likened them to Brown Shirts. That is the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
Trump's complaints about voter fraud, Milley explained to his advisors out loud, were actually calls for genocide. "This is a Reichstag moment," Milley said, "the gospel of the Führer." Those are quotes. Think about that.
So your grandfather joined the U.S. military to go overseas to risk his life to fight the Nazis. Now the head of the U.S. military calls you a Nazi for having your grandfather's political views. What do you think of that?
Keep in mind that Mark Milley is a man the media tells us is a deep intellectual, someone who reads books and stuff, not just Wikipedia. And yet, this well-read man of history is comparing nearly half of our country to Adolf Hitler. And that would include, by the way, the many Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley who voted for Trump because they agreed with him on immigration.
Mark Milley isn't just your average guy with crackpot views; Mark Milley has control of nuclear weapons. Are we okay with this? The people on TV are okay with it.
(Video begins playing)
Anderson Cooper: You read what Milley was doing, which, you know, is obeying the Constitution. It's standing up to the oath that he and serving members have taken. I mean, that's what a patriot does.
Andrew McCabe: General Milley and his team in the military, with the courage to stand up, to realize that something was going horribly off the rails with the President of the United States…
Claire McCaskill: Thank goodness, General Milley was there. And other generals, I think, all saw this guy's flaws.
Barbara Starr: It is jaw-dropping, there's no other way around it. They may be the guys with the guns, but Milley was going to make darn sure that those guns were not used.
Poppy Harlow: You think of General Milley, and you think of someone who chooses every word with intention and is a student of history. And to use the words he used, like Nazi and Reichstag, says a lot.
(Video ends)
Tucker Carlson: He's a student of history. They're easy to impress over on CNN. Make a reference to the Nazis and the Reichstag fire, and you must be a highbrow grad school guy. You hear someone compare his enemies to Nazis, you know he went to Princeton. Pretty funny. So we've established that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the same intellectual plane as the midday newsreaders on CNN.
The problem is he's a lot more powerful than they are. According to the Washington Post's account, Mark Milley is the reason that thousands of American soldiers occupied our capital this year ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration. "We're going to put a ring of steel around this city, and the Nazis aren't getting in," Milley said, referring to American citizens. A ring of steel to repel the QAnon shaman and several hundred senior citizens from Orlando with signs.
This is a guy, by the way, who's paid to assess threats, realistically. What countries pose a threat to the United States? Put them in order. If you think the QAnon shaman is the same as the SS, maybe you're not so good at that.
Then Milley gave a speech straight out of a 1990s Bruce Willis flick. "Everything is going to be okay. We're going to have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to land this plane safely. This is America, it's strong. The institutions are bending, but it won't break."
In the end, no Nazi attack ever came, much to Mark Milley's apparent disappointment. It wasn't Dunkirk. Now you'd think that would be an embarrassment to Mark Milley; you give a speech like that and nothing happens. Some guy dressed like Chewbacca shows up. But no, he was not embarrassed. In fact later, he gave a speech, testimony to Congress, and said, apparently not referring to himself, that he understands white rage better than anyone.
(Video being playing)
Mark Milley: I do think it's important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train and we understand. And I want to understand white rage. And I'm white. And I want to understand it. So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here. And I do want to analyze it. It's important that we understand that. Because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and guardians -- they come from the American people. So it is important that the leaders, now and in the future, do understand it.
(Video ends)
Tucker Carlson: White rage! Just a casual racial slur. These people have no self-awareness.
But, he tells us, he spent many hours reading Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, learning about white rage. But that white rage never came. Mark Milley was not deterred by that. Instead, soon after the election, the Post reports, "Milley began informally planning with other military leaders, strategizing how they would block Trump's order to use the military in a way they deemed dangerous or illegal."
Now wait a second, just pause here for a moment. Is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the guy who's empowered by our Constitution, our democracy, to make those decisions? No, he's not. We have civilian leadership. He can't make them independently. If he disagrees, he can resign. But he can't make them independently, because that would be a junta.
But he kept going. In early January, Nancy Pelosi pressed for specifics to Mark Milley. She wanted to know what the generals had done to help her. They wanted to know -- she wanted to know that they were doing things that were illegal, taking control of the military from civilian elected leaders. And Mark Milley didn't blush; he confirmed they had done just that. "Ma'am," Milley told Nancy Pelosi, "I guarantee you that we have checks and balances in the system." Yeah, they're written into the Constitution, Mr. Milley. I mean, it's not on Wikipedia.
According to the Post, some of those checks and balances he referred to involved undermining the elected President's authority to choose the director of the CIA. It's interesting, by the way, a lot of focus on the CIA; tells you what kind of power they have. So when the President reportedly considered firing Gina Haspel, who runs the CIA; and replacing her with a man called Kash Patel in the closing days of his administration, we now know that Milley pressured the President's Chief of Staff not to do that, to keep Haspel. "What the hell is going on here?" Milley asked Trump's Chief of Staff. "What are you guys doing?"
This is lunacy, not how the government is supposed to work. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs should not be having that conversation, expressing those views. He should leave if he can't keep them to himself. That quote right there is alone grounds for Mark Milley's immediate firing from his job. No Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has say over CIA appointees. No one in the military does; they can't. Talk about a threat to our system.
And yet, the Washington Post thinks this is fine. Because the President at the time was talking about election fraud, and that was inciting an insurrection. Scary.
We already know that Milley had subverted civilian control of the military long before the election even took place. On February 29th of last year, the Trump Administration reached a deal with the Taliban to end U.S. military involvement in that country after only 20 years. Immediately the Pentagon, led by Mark Milley, conspired to kill the deal, which they are not allowed to do under our Constitution, but they did it anyway.
According to reporting by the Grayzone, "With startling swiftness and determination, Pentagon officials and military leadership exploited the open-ended terms of the ceasefire to derail the implementation of the agreement." No informed person denies that happened. It did. The head of U.S. Central Command, Kenneth MacKenzie, testified before Congress the deal would be determined by "conditions on the ground," meaning the decision would be made not by civilian leaders but by the Pentagon. Again, threat to democracy, anyone? There it is.
Acting unilaterally, the Pentagon launched more than 30 drone attacks and eight night raids led by Special Operators forces against the Taliban. And within weeks, the peace deal was dead. They killed it. Voters had no say in this. They operated completely independently, like they run the country. Little scarier than the QAnon shaman.
Ironically, preserving a peace deal with the Taliban was the same justification that Mark Milley used later, in late 2020, to overrule Donald Trump's order to pull out of Afghanistan. Milley told the President it was only possible to remove half American forces there, not all.
Now no one in the media seems concerned by any of this. In fact, The Washington Post -- which supports authoritarianism -- is already publishing follow-up op-eds explaining that Mark Milley is a hero. There are Nazis among us -- you! And therefore, we need to get rid of the filibuster. Try to follow that logic. They're also noting with approval that Mark Milley smiled at Michelle Obama when Joe Biden was inaugurated.
So the question is, why is Mark Milley still in command of the US military? This is not a small question. If what the Washington Post's reporters are reporting -- it’s a question we need to deal with right now. Kash Patel served as Chief of Staff to the acting U.S. Secretary of Defense under the last administration. He joins us now.
Kash Patel, thanks so much for coming on. First question: Do you believe this reporting is accurate?
Kash Patel: Great to be with you, Tucker. And based on the reporting and my experiences in the Defense Department with Chairman Milley, I believe the reporting to be very accurate. And very unfortunate and tragic that the highest uniformed officer in the country would controvert his responsibility and break -- possibly break the law. Because the Constitution and the federal statutes only allow the Chairman to advise the President on military affairs. He has no command authority whatsoever.
Tucker Carlson: Because he was not elected by anyone. That's how our system works. Power vests with people. The public chooses to represent them. That's what democracy is. It's not that complicated.
So if he's trying to control who the next CIA director is -- preventing you from getting the job, as it happens -- that's so far outside what we call, I guess, democratic norms -- I don't know why no one's said anything about it.
Kash Patel: You're totally right. And I'm glad you're covering it, because so few people have.
Look, the statutes are clear. He is responsible for advising the President and the Secretary of Defense on military affairs. If anyone else in that role controverted federal statute passed by Congress, they would be, as you said, removed promptly from that position. Or he should resign. But he wants to create and has created a joint staff operation that is a pseudo-Defense Department all on its own, which he has highjacked the authority of the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States and to execute as he sees fit. And that is in contravention of the law. And he has become the very thing that he has lobbied against, which is one of the biggest political operatives in the United States Defense Department. He is now officially the kraken of the swamp.
Tucker Carlson: I mean, I don't know where all the liberals are. There used to be a lot of liberals in this country who believed in civilian control. I mean, this is an actual and grave threat to our system, a real one.
I wonder, too, about his judgment. The quotes -- they're hard to believe, it's hard to believe that a guy who's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would ever speak like that or have those thoughts that are hysterical, they're childish. But they're also so disproportionate to the observed threat that you wonder, is he capable of making rational judgments?
Kash Patel: No. The quote exemplify someone who panics under pressure and who is pandering for his job. These are the same people in media, Tucker, if you remember, when he walked across Lafayette Park with President Trump, excoriated him. The Washington Post and CNN trashed Mark Milley to no end.
Now these are the same people that are propping him up as the savior of America. And the members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, are asking him to break the law and do things that are not within his power during January 6th, just so they can continue the fake narrative about the insurrection and the overreach that the media has put on the political landscape now. And it's a shame that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the most highly politicized figure in the Department of Defense.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah. This is not just a partisan concern. I mean, he's threatening the principles, the core principles, upon which our entire system is founded. And so it's a real concern. And I appreciate you confirming that as someone who was there.
Kash Patel, thank you.
Kash Patel: Thanks so much, Tucker.
Frontpagemag.com
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/carlson-video-fire-chairman-joint-chiefs-staff-frontpage-editors/
No comments:
Post a Comment