Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly blew up at President Trump over how to handle last summer's racial-justice protests, The Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender writes in his forthcoming book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election."
The backdrop: Trump wantedto invoke the Insurrection Act and put Milley in charge of a scorched-earth military campaign to suppress protests that had spiraled into riots in several cities.
Milley — now a GOP villain for his testimony last week on critical race theory — pushed back, Bender writes in a passage Axios is reporting for the first time:
Asked for a response, Trump told Jonathan Swan through an aide: "This is totally fake news, it never ever happened. I'm not a fan of Gen. Milley, but I never had an argument with him and the whole thing is false. He never talked back to me. Michael Bender never asked me about it and it's totally fake news."
- Trump later added: "If Gen. Milley had yelled at me, I would have fired him."
Bender then told Swan: "This exchange was confirmed by multiple senior administration officials during the course of hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of top Trump World aides for this book."
- "Contrary to Mr. Trump’s assertion, I asked the former president for his side of this particular argument in a written question — as he requested — along with other queries included in my thorough fact-checking process. He did not reply.”
A spokesman for Milley declined to comment.
P.S. At Trump's Ohio rally on Saturday night, he attacked Milley without naming him: "You see these generals lately on television? They are woke."