Trump asked his aide why his generals couldn’t be like Hitler’s

WASHINGTON-The President Donald Trump he told his top White House adviser that he would like to have generals like the ones they had informed Adolf Hitlerclaiming to be “totally loyal” to the leader of the Nazi regime, according to a forthcoming book on the 45th president.

“Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump said John Kellyhis chief of staff, prefixing the question with obscenity, according to an excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in the White House”, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, published online by The New Yorker Monday morning.

Baker is the principal White House correspondent for the New York Times; Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

The excerpt shows Trump in depth frustrated by his senior military officers, whom he considered insufficiently loyal or obedient to him.

In conversation with Kelly, which took place years before the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, the authors write, the chief of staff told Trump that the German generals had “tried to kill Hitler”. three times And they almost made it. “

Trump showed contemptuousaccording to the seemingly unwitting excerpt of World War II history that Kelly, a retired four-star general, knew all too well.

“‘No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,’ replied the president,” according to the authors of the book.

“In their version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely submissive to Hitler. This was the model he wanted for his army. Kelly told Trump there were no such generals Americans, but the president was determined to test the proposal. “

Much of the piece focuses on the general Mark A. Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country’s top military officer, under Trump.

When the president offered him the job, Milley told him:

“I’ll do what you ask me to do.”

But he immediately quarreled with the president.

The general’s frustration with the president peaked on June 1, 2020, when the protesters left Black lives matter filled Lafayette Square, near the White House.

Trump asked to send the military to eliminate the protesters, but Milley and other important advisers They refused.

In response, Trump yelled, “You are all losers!” according to the excerpt.

“Turning to Milley, Trump said, ‘Can’t you just shoot him? Is it enough to shoot him in the legs or something? ‘”The authors write.

After the National Guard and police cleared the square, Milley briefly joined the president and other aides to walk through the empty park so Trump could be photographed in front of a church on the other side.

The authors said Milley later saw their decision to join the president as a “evaluation mistake that would haunt him forever, a ‘moment on the road to Damascus’, as he will later say “.

A week after that episode, Milley wrote, but never delivered, to fierce letter of resignationaccusing the president who has served to politicize the military, to “ruin the international order,” of not appreciating diversity and embracing the tyranny, dictatorship and extremism that the military had sworn to fight.

“I believe you are doing serious and irreparable damage to my country,” the general wrote in the letter, which was not previously disclosed and was published in full by the New Yorker.

Milley wrote that Trump did not honor those who fought against fascism and the Nazis during World War II.

“Now this is obvious to me does not understand that world order, ”wrote Milley.

“He doesn’t understand what the war was about. Indeed, subscribe many of the principles we fight against. And I can’t be part of it. “

However, Milley eventually decided to stay in office so that he could ensure that the military could act as a bulwark against an increasingly aggressive president. out of controlaccording to the authors of the book.

“‘Simply I will fight with himMilley told his staff, according to the New Yorker excerpt.

“The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing it more damagewhile acting in a manner consistent with its obligation to carry out the orders of its commander-in-chief.

‘If you want to woo me or put me in jail, do it.’ “

In addition to the revelations about Milley, the book excerpt reveals new details about Trump’s interactions with his top Army and National Security officials and documents the drastic efforts of the former president’s chief advisers to avoid a national or international crisis in the weeks following the loss of his re-election.

In the summer of 2017, the book excerpt reveals, Trump returned from the Bastille Day parade in Paris and told Kelly he wanted one of his own.

But the president told Kelly, “Look, I don’t want war casualties in the parade. This doesn’t look good to me, “the authors write.

“Kelly couldn’t believe what she was hearing,” continues the excerpt.

“’Those are the heroes,’ he told Trump. “In our society, there is only one group of people who are more heroic than them and are buried in Arlington.”

Trump replied: “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good to me, “according to the authors.

The excerpt highlights how many of the president’s top advisers tried to solidify their reputations after the attack on Capitol Hill.

Like Milley, who largely refrained from publicly criticizing Trump, they are now eager to clear up their disagreements with him. to cooperate with book authors and journalists.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeowho has never publicly questioned Trump’s wild election claims and has rarely criticized him ever since, has privately rejected the fraud claims that Trump and his advisors have accepted.

On the night of November 9, 2020, after the media announced the victory of Joe BidenPompeo called Milley and asked to see him, according to the excerpt.

During a conversation at the general’s kitchen table, Pompeo was directed to what he thought of the people around the president.

“‘The fools have taken over,'” Pompeo told Milley, according to the authors.

Behind the scenes, they write, Pompeo had immediately accepted that the elections were over and refused to promote its cancellation.

“’I was totally against it,’ recalled a senior State Department official.

Pompeo cynically justified this stark contrast between what he said in public and in private.

“It was also important for him not to be fired in the end, to be there until the end,” the senior official said, according to the excerpt.

The authors detail what they call an “extraordinary deal” in the weeks following the election between Pompeo and Milley to make daily morning phone calls with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in an effort to ensure the president does not make decisions. dangerous.

“Pompeo and Milley soon began calling them the ‘plane land’ phone calls,” the authors write.

“‘Our job is to land this plane safely and make a peaceful transfer of power on January 20,” Milley told his staff.

“This is our obligation to this nation.”

However, there was a problem. “Both engines are off, the landing gear is stuck. We are in an emergency situation ‘”.

Hearings on January 6 on Capitol Hill this summer revealed that many of the former president’s top advisors privately rejected their electoral denials, even when some have refused to do so publicly.

Several, including Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House adviser, testified that they tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the president that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.

In the excerpt, the authors state that Milley concluded that Cipollone was “a force to ‘try to keep the railings around the president'”.

The general also believed that Pompey was “genuinely seeking a peaceful transfer of power,” the authors write.

But they add that Milley “I’ve never been sure what to do with Meadows.

Was the chief of staff trying to land the plane or hijack it?

Milley is not the only senior official to consider resigning in response to the president’s actions, the authors write.

The book excerpt details the private conversations between the president’s national security team as they discussed what to do if he attempted to take actions they felt they could not tolerate.

The authors report that Milley consulted Robert Gatesformer secretary of defense and former director of the CIA.

Gates’ advice was blunt, the authors write:

“‘Keep the heads aboard with you and make it clear to the White House that if you leave, everyone will, so the White House knows it’s not just about firing Marc Milley. It’s about the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff resigning in response. ‘”

The excerpt makes it clear that Trump didn’t always get the men he wanted.

During an exchange in the Oval Office, Trump asked General Paul Selva, an Air Force officer and vice president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what he thought of the president’s desire for a Military parade through the nation’s capital on July 4th.

Selva’s response, which has not been reported earlier, was forceful and not what the president wanted to hear, according to the book’s authors.

“’I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,’ General Selva said.

“’Portugal was a dictatorship and the parades had to show the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t. ‘ He added: “That’s not who we are.”

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