With the many revelations coming out of the House January 6 Committee (see the full report here), it’s easy to overlook a very important matter they didn’t investigate: Donald Trump clearly tried to get the U.S. military to back him in a coup d’état.
As early as August 2020, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the military had no role in elections. From The Associated Press:
“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” Milley said in written responses to several questions posed by two Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee. “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S armed forces in this process.”
What an odd pronouncement! Why would Milley, out of the blue, suddenly provide everyone a Constitutional analysis? Because clearly someone had asked Milley — and probably other generals and admirals — to intervene. And who could that have been? Trump himself or one of his minions.
Milley repeated his position once again in October in an interview with NPR. Sound like someone was keeping up the pressure even after the August pronouncement? Yeah, it sounds like that to me, too.
And it also makes me wonder if disgraced General Michael Flynn wasn’t in on this, as well. Indeed, not quite six months later, Flynn endorsed a coup before a crowd of QAnon quacks. Said Flynn: “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here.” Four months earlier, the military in Myanmar toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and replaced it with a military dictatorship. So Flynn was imagining a fascist putsch to reinstate Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Are you wondering why the January 6 Committee didn’t look into any of that? Me, too.
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