“General, what do you think about the Confederate bases?” Trump asked, knowing his answer already but seeming to hope the chairman might have had a change of position since their last conversation.
“Mr. President, are you sure that you want me to answer that?” Milley said. “Do you want to hear it again?”
Trump said he did.
“Okay, I think you should change the names of all the Confederate bases,” Milley said. “I don’t think Confederate flags and statues should be in the public space. These guys were traitors. Thirty-eight of them were indicted for treason. And more importantly, Mr. President, they lost the war. They’re losers, Mr. President. They betrayed the country. We absolutely should change the names of those bases.”
Trump fell silent.
“I know that opinion is different from many people in this room,” Milley said. “Mr. Meadows over here is from North Carolina. He firmly believes the opposite. But I wear Union blue. We won the war. It’s over.”
Trump went around the room asking others for their advice.
“Sir, I think it’s a mistake,” Kellogg said. “I’m a Fort Bragg, North Carolina, guy. Ninety-nine percent of the soldiers at Fort Bragg couldn’t tell you who Fort Bragg was named after. They don’t know who the hell Braxton Bragg is. It’s a power-projection platform of the army, and when people say they’re from Bragg, it means a lot.”
Kellogg continued. “This ‘cancel culture’ is a mistake,” he said. “I don’t know where it ends. This reminds me of what the Taliban did when they blew up statues. You start destroying your culture. Learn from your history. Nobody says American history is perfect, but learn from it.”
At one point in the discussion, Milley said, “Robert E. Lee was a traitor.” That set Kellogg off.
“Wait a second, Mark,” Kellogg said. He pointed to the White House residence out the window of the Oval Office. “That discussion was held over one hundred and fifty years ago. Andrew Johnson wanted to court-martial Robert E. Lee for being a traitor and U. S. Grant told him, ‘You do that, you find a new general. Let him go home.’ Mark, you better learn your history, because that decision was made a long time ago.”
Kellogg added, “Mark, what happens when they want to take away one of the largest monuments in Arlington National Cemetery, the [Confederate] Memorial? What about disinterring the Confederates? Where does this all end?”
Milley responded by drawing Trump into the conversation.
“Mr. President, as you well know, all the graves in Arlington are in rows, except those Confederates, and they’re in a circle with their names facing inward,” he said. “And the symbolism of that, Mr. President, is they turned their back on the union and the Constitution. They turned their back at the time, they turned their back in death, and they will be traitors for eternity.”
Trump looked at Milley with an expression of canine curiosity. He merely said, “Okay.”
Trump’s advisers concluded that the president didn’t really care about whether military bases were named after Confederate generals. He had no ideology, much less a nuanced understanding of history and the nation’s sordid legacy on race. All he cared about was making sure the people who voted for him in 2016 would vote for him again in November. He was a transactional president. After all, renaming military bases would go against his well-established assault on political correctness.
On June 10, Trump announced a decision on Twitter: “These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. . . . Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”
* * *
—
The Lafayette Square incident on June 1 reverberated deeply in the military community. In the days afterward, retired generals and admirals spoke out against Trump’s efforts to politicize the armed forces. No one felt the heat more acutely than Milley, who, unlike Esper, had not yet publicly explained his actions and values.
One of Milley’s predecessors as chairman, retired Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, wrote on June 2 that he felt compelled to finally break his silence about Trump’s leadership. “Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces,” Mullen wrote in The Atlantic.
A bigger shoe dropped the next day, June 3, when Trump’s first defense secretary, retired Marine Corps General Jim Mattis, finally went public with his disdain for the president. Mattis had long insisted it would be improper for him to criticize a sitting president, but after seeing military personnel on the scene as officers forcibly cleared peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square, he decided he had a duty to speak out.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis wrote, also in The Atlantic. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
Mattis also criticized Milley for having jeopardized the military’s independence when he walked, in battle fatigues, with the president. The nonpartisan military that Mattis had served for nearly five decades was being used as decoration for a political photo op, and the president was using the leaders who replaced him at the Defense Department to further divide the nation, Mattis fumed to friends.
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
Mattis nursed a grudge against Milley. He believed Milley had flattered and humored the president to get his job. Mattis had wanted Trump to nominate his ally, General David Goldfein, then the Air Force chief of staff, as chairman when the position opened in 2018 with the retirement of General Joseph Dunford. But when Trump interviewed Milley, they hit it off and the president offered him the job on the spot. Milley believed Mattis held it against him; several times since then, Mattis had given him the cold shoulder, literally greeting others in a line but bypassing Milley.
It irked Milley, as well as Esper, that Mattis had not called them first to share his concerns before writing a public condemnation. Like Esper, Milley also knew that he was going to have to say something to correct the horrible impression that walk had left. Milley was a devout Catholic and was raised to believe that the only way to recover from a mistake was to confess.
Milley had often remarked to others that the United States had the only military in the world whose members do not take an oath to a monarch, leader, tribe, religion, or country. They take an oath to the Constitution—a living, dynamic document—and to the idea that American citizens are born free and equal and can rise to the level of their merit, skills, and hard work.
He was scheduled to speak to the graduating class of the National Defense University on June 10 and thought that would be the perfect venue to confess his mistake. He had a commencement address ready to go, but starting the night of June 1, he began rewriting most of it. He sat with a legal pad in the living room of his Fort Myer home and scribbled out an apology. Milley wanted to speak in a way that didn’t appear political, and to address racism head-on. He asked a Black executive officer to help him with the speech.
Milley did not give Trump,
Meadows, or even Esper any advance warning. After all, this speech wasn’t going to be about them. It was going to be about the military’s values, systemic racism, and the Constitution. If they want to fire me, he thought, I don’t care. Screw it.
Addressing the graduates, Milley said the protests reflected not just one man’s death but “centuries of injustice toward African Americans.”
“What we are seeing is the long shadow of our original sin in Jamestown four hundred and one years ago, liberated by the Civil War, but not equal in the eyes of the law until one hundred years later in 1965,” Milley said. “We are still struggling with racism, and we have much work to do. Racism and discrimination, structural preferences, patterns of mistreatment, unspoken and unconscious bias have no place in America, and they have no place in our Armed Forces.”
Milley then addressed June 1.
“As many of you saw, the results of the photograph of me in Lafayette Square last week, that sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society,” Milley told the graduates. “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
After Milley finished speaking, Meadows called.
“You should’ve cleared that,” he said.
“Well, Chief, I don’t think so,” Milley said. “It wasn’t about the White House. Listen to the whole speech. It’s a good speech.”
“It looks like you’re opposing the president,” Meadows said.
“I’m not opposing the president at all,” Milley said. “This was about me going to confession, Chief. This is about no politicization of the military. Chief, we should not politicize the military.”
Kellogg had seen the apology speech as well and called Milley up to offer an apology of his own.
“I feel so bad,” Kellogg said. “I knew what was going to happen. I knew that was a political event. I knew what they were orchestrating.
“Shit,” Kellogg added. “Mark, you shouldn’t have been there. And it’s my fault. . . . I’m kicking myself because I knew better. I should’ve not let you do it. I should’ve said, ‘Mark, you’re the only one in uniform. Go get lost.’ ”
Milley shook his head.
“I appreciate that, but what’s done is done,” he said. “At the end of the day, I own it.”
A couple of days later, Milley met with Trump in the Oval. He could tell the president was furious. There were other people in the room, but Trump focused on Milley.
“Why did you apologize?” he asked. “Apologies are a sign of weakness.”
“Mr. President, not where I come from they’re not,” Milley replied. “The way I was brought up is, when you make a mistake you apologize, and you get it over with.”
“What’s wrong with walking with your president?” Trump asked.
“Mr. President, this has nothing to do with you,” Milley said. “This had to do with me and the uniform and not politicizing the uniform. I’m not apologizing for you. I was apologizing for me.”
Trump gave Milley a quizzical look.
“Mr. President, I don’t expect you to get that,” Milley said. “But I’m a soldier, and I can never allow the politicization of this uniform. I can’t do it. It’s wrong. And that’s why I apologized.”
After the meeting wrapped, Milley and Meadows went to the chief of staff’s office for a heart-to-heart.
“Chief, never again—never,” Milley said. “We’re not politicizing this uniform. We’re not politicizing this military. It’s wrong. It’s way fucking wrong. It’s had a dramatic effect on the military. And it will have a dramatic effect on you guys.”
Meadows shook his head and said using the military wasn’t political—and indeed was appropriate in some situations.
“I’m a professional. I owe you professional and candid feedback,” Milley said. “You’re chief of staff of the White House. And I’m giving it to you right now.
“You don’t want the military in politics,” Milley said. “It’s fundamental to the survival of the republic.”
* * *
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Something else changed for Milley after June 1. That summer, he kept hearing Trump warn that he might not trust the November election results, that if he did not win by a landslide, the vote was rigged. Milley told aides that he had reached out to a trusted confidant soon after Lafayette Square. He had a plan, and he needed someone to hold him accountable to it.
“I have four tasks from now until the twentieth of January, and I’m going to accomplish my mission,” Milley told this confidant, referring to the Inauguration in 2021. “Mission One is to get us from now until the election without U.S. troops on the streets of America killing Americans. Mission Two is no overseas war with Iran. Mission Three is maintaining the integrity of the U.S. military. Mission Four is maintaining my own personal integrity.
“That’s my mission and I commit to you that mission,” he continued. “And our mission is to ensure the United States of America has a free and fair election with no U.S. military involvement whatsoever.”
Nine
A Sea of Empty Seats
Ever since the release of the Mueller report in 2019, which he had overseen a few months after becoming attorney general, Bill Barr had been labeled as a puppet of Trump. Barr bristled at the notion that he let the president call any prosecutorial decisions at the Justice Department. In reality, however, Trump didn’t need to exercise control over the department by fiat or suggestion. Barr was a political operator and a lifelong conservative, dedicated to empowering Trump and advancing the Republican cause as long as it was reasonable, lawful, and part of his job. Barr didn’t need instructions from Trump because he was already unapologetic in his belief that every Cabinet member should be trying to help reelect the president.
In 2020, Barr was on a glide path to exerting more control over major U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country, those that his top aides called “offices of consequence.” The two most important were in New York and Washington, in that order. These offices also happened to have most of the cases that mattered personally to the president. Barr had pushed out Jessie Liu as the U.S. attorney in Washington in January and replaced her with a loyalist. By mid-June, Barr decided it was time to pull the trigger in the Southern District of New York, too. The office had been investigating Trump’s 2016 campaign, his businesses, and his longtime ally and personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Anything could happen in any of these cases at any time to wreak havoc on the president’s reelection campaign—as Trump was all too aware.
“That office has a bunch of [partisan prosecutors] who are after me,” Trump once told Barr.
Since becoming attorney general, Barr had clashed several times with the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Geoffrey Berman. Barr didn’t like Berman’s proclivity for pushback against directives from “Main Justice,” as the Washington headquarters was known. And Berman didn’t like how Barr second-guessed his office’s handling of criminal investigations connected to the president. Barr wanted to be personally briefed on investigations that held some importance—or liability—for Trump. Berman concluded that the attorney general was playing the role of fixer for the president.
Their most heated dispute had come in June 2019, when Barr had urged Berman to drop the prosecutions of two Turkish defendants accused of using Halkbank, a Turkish bank, in a scheme to bypass U.S. sanctions against Iran. Turkish president Recep Erdogan had repeatedly pressed Trump to drop the case, and Trump had been eager to acquiesce, even though doing so would undermine U.S. national security interests in the Middle East. Trump had significant business interests in Turkey—his company made roughly $2.6 million a year from properties there—but he also felt a brotherly bond with Erdogan, telling aides he liked his authoritarian strength and Darth Vader–like baritone voice. Berman told Barr he wouldn’t
drop the charges midinvestigation without asking those charged to cooperate in the probe. “This is not how we do things in the Southern District,” Berman said.
In June 2020, Berman again defied Main Justice. Barr’s deputies were asking Berman to sign a letter criticizing New York mayor Bill de Blasio for his enforcement of social distancing rules to curb the spread of COVID-19. They wanted Berman to join the head of the department’s civil rights division, Eric Dreiband, in objecting to the mayor endorsing large George Floyd protests while curtailing or banning religious gatherings—an effort seemingly designed to curry favor with Christian conservatives. On June 18, as Barr’s office prepared to release the letter, Berman said it was a political “stunt” that would unnecessarily provoke city leaders, and he refused to sign.
Barr was scheduled to fly to New York on June 19 to tape a sit-down interview with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. He decided to fix his problem in the Southern District while he was in town. On June 18, Barr’s scheduler emailed Berman to say the boss wanted to meet him for lunch the next day at the Pierre hotel. The email didn’t say what Barr wanted to discuss, and Berman didn’t ask. But he was pretty sure the conversation, like most of his with Barr recently, would be unpleasant.
Berman had a few friends at Main Justice who had warned him that Barr was a bully who rammed his decisions down the throats of department chiefs, many of whom didn’t dare to speak up for fear of hurting their careers. Berman knew Liu had felt browbeaten and mistreated by Barr; she called Berman to seek his advice when Barr and his then chief of staff, Brian Rabbitt, were pressuring her to step down.
“Tell Brian to go fuck himself,” Berman counseled Liu. “Then go on vacation.”
They had both chuckled grimly. But Liu relented, surrendering her post within a few weeks. Now, as he awaited their lunch date at the Pierre, Berman wondered: What did Barr want? Barr wanted precisely what he had done with Liu: to make sure the U.S. attorney was someone more firmly in his—and consequently the president’s—court. Barr saw an opportunity to “upgrade” in the Southern District, as he put it to others, and to let Trump scratch an itch. Barr hoped by getting rid of the Southern District’s chief, he might hold the president off from terminating other officials, such as Chris Wray at the FBI.
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year Page 21