Donald Trump reportedly spoke to a foreign policy expert who advised him why the U.S. couldn’t use nuclear weapons. That was in 2016; then, in 2019, Trump brought up the idea of nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting the U.S. Trump’s fascination with nuclear weapons has unnerved quite a few people. And just after the twice-impeached one-term president incited the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley took top-secret action to prevent Trump from launching nuclear weapons, according to a new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward and Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.
CNN reports that Woodward and Costa write in the book that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, “was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.”
The authors write that Milley was worried that Trump could “go rogue.”.
“You never know what a president’s trigger point is,” Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.
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“In response, Milley took extraordinary action and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons,” CNN reports. “Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.”
“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley told the officers, according to the forthcoming book. At that point, Milley then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to confirm that they understood verbally.
“Got it?” Milley asked, according to the book.
“Yes, sir.”x
“Milley considered it an oath,” the authors write.
After the insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was concerned, too, over Trump’s erratic behavior, so she phoned Milley, according to the authors that obtained a transcript of the call.
“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do?” Pelosi told Milley. “And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?”
Pelosi continued, “You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”
Milley responded, “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.”
“After the call, Milley decided he had to act,” CNN reports. ‘He told his top service chiefs to watch everything “all the time.” He called the director of the National Security Agency, Paul Nakasone, and told him, “Needles up … keep watching, scan.” And he told then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, “Aggressively watch everything, 360.”‘
The authors write, “Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world.”
Woodward and Costa write, according to the outlet, that after Jan. 6, Milley “felt no absolute certainty that the military could control or trust Trump and believed it was his job as the senior military officer to think the unthinkable and take any and all necessary precautions.” The authors write that Milley called it the “absolute darkest moment of theoretical possibility.”
It sure sounds like we dodged a bullet in November when Americans decided to fire Donald Trump. And yet, Trump appears to be the GOP 2024 frontrunner.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
