Retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, now says Trump is a “total fascist” and “fascist to the core,” according to a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward, the famed Watergate journalist.
“He is the most dangerous person ever,” Milley told Woodward for his book “War,” according to The Guardian. “I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”
“A fascist to the core,” Milley said.
Part of Milley’s warning about Trump revolves around the former president’s promise to get revenge on his perceived political enemies. Trump has frequently told his supporters on the campaign trail: “I am your retribution.” Milley, who clashed with Trump in the White House and who has since been publicly critical of the current Republican presidential nominee, told Woodward that he’s afraid of being recalled from retirement to be court-martialed if Trump wins the election next month.
According to the Guardian’s report on Woodward’s book, Milley warned his former colleagues in Washington that Trump was “a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” adding: “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”
Milley was pointing in particular to how Steve Bannon — who rose to White House strategist after chairing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and who is now in jail for being found in contempt of Congress — has threatened him. “We’re gonna hold him accountable,” Bannon has said of Milley.
Woodward’s book also details a tense Oval Office discussion Milley had with Trump and his second secretary of defense, Mark Esper. Trump reportedly wanted to get revenge on, or potentially court-martial, William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who led the 2011 mission in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed. Trump was enraged that the retired admiral publicly criticized him.
Milley told Woodward he was able to mollify Trump by saying he would “take care” of it but then warned McRaven and other former military commanders to keep off the “public stage” for a while and ease up on their criticisms of Trump.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment about Milley’s reported comments to Woodward.
Milley’s stories about Trump in the White House are similar to recollections from other military figures, including retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff. As noted by the Guardian, Kelly said Trump reportedly insisted that generals should be “like the German generals” serving under Adolf Hitler during World War II, who were “totally loyal.”
On the campaign trail this year Trump has said he’d be a “dictator” on his first day in office. He has also repeatedly used explicitly fascist rhetoric while talking about immigrants in the United States.
Milley is not alone in his assessment that Trump is a fascist.
Robert Paxton, considered one of the foremost scholars of fascism, initially declined to call Trump a fascist during his rise to the White House in 2016, but he changed his tune after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 removes my objection to the fascist label,” Paxton wrote at the time. “His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.”