Milley calls Trump ‘a fascist to the core’ in new Woodward book

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and retired Gen. Mark Milley has called former President Trump “a total fascist” and believes he is the most dangerous person to the U.S., according to excerpts from the forthcoming Bob Woodward book.

“He is the most dangerous person ever. 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,” Milley told Woodward for the book “War,” which was previewed by The Guardian. “A fascist to the core.”

Milley, who was chair under Trump and President Biden, also fears he would be court-martialed should Trump win the presidency next month because the commander in chief has power over retired commissioned officers and can recall them to active duty and court-martial them. 

Such a situation is not out of the realm of possibility because Trump has often voiced his desire to take revenge on those who have spoken out against him.

“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley warned former colleagues, according to Woodward. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Woodward cites Steve Bannon, a former senior Trump adviser, who earlier this year gave a list of people he believes Trump should go after if he is elected to a second term, including Milley, former FBI directors Andrew McCabe and James Comey, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Attorney General Bill Barr. 

“We’re gonna hold him accountable,” Bannon says of Milley in the book.

Bannon is in jail for contempt of Congress.

Trump has previously sought to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who have criticized him. In a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump’s second confirmed secretary of Defense, the then-president “yelled” and “shouted” about two former military officials, William McRaven and Stanley McChrystal, Woodward writes.

McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, had written a piece for the Washington Post about Trump, saying “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

And McChrystal, a retired special forces general whose men killed al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006, made comments on CNN calling Trump “immoral” and “dishonest.”

Trump called Milley and Esper to the White House and pushed the two to take care of the retired officials, but they pressed him not to seek to punish McRaven and McChrystal.

“The president didn’t want to hear it,” so Milley promised Trump he would “‘take care of this,’” according to Woodward.

Milley then called McRaven and McChrystal and warned them to “pull it back” and “step off the public stage.”

Woodward also wrote of Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since he retired last year, saying he has installed bullet-proof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home at his own expense.

Milley has often spoken out against Trump and relayed stories from his time in the Joint Chiefs from 2019 to 2023. 

In a speech during his retirement ceremony, Milley infamously appeared to directly refer to Trump, who was then seeking to become the Republican presidential nominee.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

Woodward’s book has also revealed several other bombshells, including that Trump sent COVID-19 testing machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin for personal use in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and that he has had at least seven phone calls with Putin since leaving office.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.