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Army Gen. Mark Milley stepped down Friday from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but not before taking a final swipe at former President Donald Trump in keeping with his string of political statements while in uniform.
At a grandiose retirement ceremony on Friday, which featured remarks from President Joe Biden, Milley delivered a long-winded speech where he alluded to his former boss, Trump, as a “wannabe dictator.”:
You say we in uniform are unique. We are unique among the world’s armies. We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.
While Milley during his tenure touted upholding democracy and morals, he leaves behind a military that is less trusted than when he first became the chairman and facing a historic recruitment crisis.
According to polls by the Ronald Reagan Institute, five years ago, 70 percent of Americans said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the military, but that plummeted to 48 percent in 2022. Respondents said the top reason was “military leadership becoming overly politicized.”
Milley repeatedly injected himself into politics during his service as chairman.
He was appointed to the position by Trump, over the objection of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who allegedly could not stand him. Trump, however, liked Milley’s bravado.
Yet, Milley turned on his boss after he was criticized by the media for walking with Trump in a show of strength after Black Lives Matters rioters set fire to a historic church at Lafayette Park and almost stormed the White House.
Milley publicly apologized for appearing with Trump, and sat for a number of interviews with book authors, who revealed that Milley had acted to undermine Trump’s authority after the 2020 election, as the government prepared for the incoming Biden administration.
According to one book, Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley was worried that Trump could “go rogue,” and he called a secret meeting on January 8, 2021, with senior military leaders, during which he instructed senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.
“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley told them, Woodward and Costa wrote. “Milley considered it an oath.”
The book also revealed that Milley had two back-channel phone calls with China’s top general to reassure him that the U.
