I get the uproar over Bob Woodward's latest luridly compelling book on the administration of Donald Trump. Woodward is like a filthy tabloid version of Robert Caro, and he always squeezes every anecdote for maximum salaciousness. So in his telling, Gen. Mike Milley, Trump's (and now Biden's) Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so alarmed at Trump's behavior before the election and after the January 6 riot that he felt compelled to call his counterpart in China and say, more or less, "Don't listen to this president. We're not going to attack you."
What you're hearing mostly about Milley's two phone calls is that he was "treasonous," that he should be "court martialed," and that he should face "immediate dismissal" for undermining civilian leadership of the military. On the other side, Milley himself has defended what he did as proper and that it was "within the duties and responsibilities" of his position to tell other countries that the United States is not going to war with them. He's backed by other generals and President Biden. Chances are that this is really a big nothing sandwich that Woodward oversold and overhyped, as is his way.
And that's a whole interesting discussion we can and should have, but it really misses the whole fucking forest for a few shitty trees. Because, see, what's truly important about what Milley, along with then-CIA director Gina Haspel, said is to confirm that the United States was run by a dangerous and unstable fucknut whose naturally worst instincts were held in check by a few public servants who saw that Trump had the potential to fuck things up in an even more deadly and destructive way than he already had.
In other words, the person who is seen as the head of the Republican Party, who would win the presidential nomination in a walk, who is worshiped by millions of Americans, who has politicians bowing and scraping for his favor, yeah, that fuckin' guy is legit a goddamn maniac.
That's the story. That's what we should be talking about. Yeah, fine, we can get around to the debate over whether Milley overstepped his authoritah or whatever. But I'd like to put that on the back burner until we're done reckoning with and doing something about the murderous lunatic who's in charge of one of our two parties. See, when someone is trying to burn down my house, I'm not gonna worry if the pizza delivery guy overcharged me, especially if the pizza delivery guy stopped the arsonist. In that case, I'd probably just tell him, "We'll call this one a wash."
You can just toss Milley and Haspel, who called Trump's post-2020 election behavior "insanity" and said that he was "acting out like a six-year-old with a tantrum," onto the pile of former Trump officials in some of the most important jobs in government who have been quoted or have publicly stated that the ex-president is a mothefucking loon. You've got former national security adviser John Bolton, a loon himself, saying that Trump is "irrational" and a conspiracy-monger. You've got former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying that Trump acts impulsively and, perhaps, calling him a "fucking moron." You've got former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, among others, saying that Trump is, at best, an incompetent boob and, at worst, a danger to the existence of the country. We may never know how many times Trump took us to the brink of national calamity, only for someone to intervene and get him to back off. We know how his insane insistence on bullshit and lies prolonged the pandemic and got hundreds of thousands killed. Goddamn, what else could he have done?
We should have been talking about that every day. Nancy Pelosi told Milley, "He's crazy. You know he's crazy. He's been crazy for a long time." Sorry, but that's way more important than whose toes Milley might have stepped on. And if Trump announces that he's running in 2024, then we're gonna need to make the fact that he's out of his tiny mind front and center in any discussion of him. It's the only story. We can't be too polite about talking about the mental health of someone whose mental health affects every person on the fucking planet. And we sure as hell can't be distracted by something that isn't about life and death.
