Trump floats idea of executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley

KARACHI: Former president of the United States -- and a leading Republican candidate for the US presidential election -- Donald Trump has suggested that United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley be executed.

In an article in The Atlantic on Monday, ‘Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley’, writer Brian Klaas said that on Friday night Trump had posted a long message on his social media site Truth Social in which he “insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death”.

Trump had posted on Truth Social that Milley’s phone call to reassure China after the storming of Capitol Hill in 2021 was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

The Atlantic report added that the said phone call “was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.”

Klaas went on to say in his piece that Trump’s threats against Milley had gone ignored by most mainstream media in the US but had found takers among Trump’s supporters in Congress, for example “Republican Paul Gosar of Arizona wrote -- in his taxpayer-funded newsletter, no less -- that ‘in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung. The meaning is not ambiguous: Gosar is explicitly saying that killing Milley would be desirable.”

The text of Trump’s long post on Truth Social read as: “Mark Milley, who led perhaps the most embarrassing moment in American history with his grossly incompetent implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, costing many lives, leaving behind hundreds of American citizens, and handing over BILLIONS of dollars of the finest military equipment ever made, will be leaving the military next week. This will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate! This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

According to The Atlantic, this post came after a profile of Milley printed by the publication. It has been noted by some analysis that Milley had described Trump’s disturbing comments about a disabled veteran who had been seriously injured after five combat tours.

Last Saturday, former New York Attorney General’s Office official Tristan Snell had posted on X (formerly Twitter) on the matter: “My bet: Donald Trump is threatening General Milley because General Milley is on the government’s witness list for the trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case”.

The Atlantic piece has ended on a sombre note for the US: “The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the US Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.”