General Milley and his fears of a Trump coup

General Mark Milley is a serious chap. As chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff he always looks like he has the world's burdens on his shoulders - and his eyebrows. Now we know why. He really thought that Donald Trump and his millions of supporters were going to launch a coup to ensure he stayed in the White House after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. This has all come out in a new book by two respected Washington Post reporters. Well I think we knew that anyway, didn't we? Milley with his very serious face made it clear at the time of the election and post-election that the military had no role to play. But I'm sure behind the scenes he was saying what the two reporters claim he was saying which was that there was no way the military was going to get involved in backing Trump's accusation that the election was a fraud. There was all that talk if you remember about whether the military chiefs, head by Milley, would need to march into the White House to remove Trump if he refused to leave after being defeated in the election. That was all fun and made good headlines but it was never going to happen. Even Trump finally acknowledged that he would have to leave and went off in a frump down to his Florida palace while Biden was inaugurated as the new president. As for a coup, well, Milley made the key point, according to the reporters in their book, you can't have a coup without the men and women with the guns, ie the military, the CIA and FBI, and they weren't about to back any coup by a president who lost to his rival. If Milley did say these things to his friends and closest aides - as I suspect he did - then it just shows the incredibly tense time that he and others endured during the weeks before and after the election in November 2020. I don't think any other chairman of the Joint Chiefs has had to face such a potential dilemma in America's history. Hopefully Milley himself, once he has retired, will tell all in a memoir but he probably won't, being an honourable military chap who has to remain loyal to his commanders-in-chief whatever they might want to do. Trump no doubt will at some stage say the new book is all rubbish and fake news and General Milley is a joke general. Milley will have to take it all on his prominent chin and hope for better days.