The Secretary of the Army.
The following general officer is Retired
General Mark Milley.
Joint Chiefs
Chairman General Mark Milley
has officially retired
after holding the military's
top job for the last four years
and spending more than four decades
serving the country.
Just last hour, General Milley
pass the baton to his new replacement
General Siku
Brown during his special
farewell ceremony at the Pentagon.
Miller's retirement
comes after a tumultuous tenure
that spanned
some of the most chaotic
political moments
of the Trump administration.
During his speech,
the general appeared to take a shot
at the former president.
Listen to this.
We don't take an oath
to a wannabe dictator.
We don't take an oath to an individual.
We take an oath to the Constitution.
And we take an oath to the idea
that is America
and we're willing to die to protect it.
General Milley
helped steer
the country
through the January 6th attack
on the Capitol,
the chaotic US withdrawal
from Afghanistan,
and the high stakes
maneuvering around the war in Ukraine.
President
Biden honored the general,
calling him a leader of great strength.
And Brianna,
we should note
those comments from General Milley
about a wannabe dictator
come as his former
boss is really criticizing him
pretty openly.
Yet, no doubt, in fact,
as General Milley retires,
he may have the distinction
of being the first chairman
of the Joint Chiefs
seen off with violent threats
from a former commander in chief,
Donald Trump, of course, here.
Milley
telling 60 minutes this weekend
that he's had to take security measures
to protect his family
as much as these comments directed at me.
It's also directed
at the institution of the military.
And this does 2.1 million of us
in uniform
and the American people
can take it to the bank that all of us
every single one of us,
from private to general,
will loyal to that constitution
that will never turn our back on it,
no matter what,
no matter what the threats,
no matter what the humiliation,
no matter what.
Are you worried about your safety?
I've got
adequate safety precautions
I wish those comments had not been made,
but they were.
And we'll take appropriate measures to
ensure my safety
and the safety of my family.
So here are the comments
that Milley is referring to.
It's a post from Trump saying
that Miller's calls
with his Chinese counterpart
in the final days of his administration
were an action so egregious
that in the past
they would have been punishable by death,
according to multiple sources.
Mind you,
these were calls
where, in part, Milley
sought to calm his counterpart
in China
by reassuring him
that the US was not considering
an attack on China.
Sources say there were 15 people
on these video calls.
And Trump is saying
that Milley should have been killed
for them, quote, in times gone by.
Well, this is the violent
rhetoric that Trump and also
his allies have become known for.
The most famous example, of course,
being this one on January six.
20, 21.
We fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country
anymore.
Let's have trial by combat.
We all know what happened after that.
114 police officers injured.
One police officer died
the day after the attack.
Four have died by suicide
in the aftermath.
And four of Trump's
supporters died, including
one shot by Capitol Police
while at the
front of a mob of people climbing
through the shattered window of a door
just feet from where
lawmakers were sheltering in place
before January six.
Trump's violent rhetoric was long
criticized for what it might inspire.
But after January six,
it was no longer
an exercise in hypothetic. Rules.
Kelly Meggs,
a member of the far
right Oath Keepers group
convicted of seditious conspiracy
for his role
in the attack on the Capitol,
wrote two weeks before the insurrection.
Trump said, It's going to be wild.
It's going to be wild.
He wants us to make it wild.
That's what he's saying.
He called us all to the Capitol
and wants us to make it wild.
Sir, yes, sir.
So we all know the stakes.
Trump knows the stakes.
They're sky high.
And yet Trump is undeterred,
repeatedly threatening
those who he perceives to be his enemies.
Like the prosecutors
and the judges involved
in the four indictments
that he is now facing.
There's Fulton County D.A.
Fani Willis,
who is trying
Trump for alleged
election interference in Georgia.
She says she and her staff
have received violent and racist threats.
Judge Tonya Rudkin
presiding over Trump's federal election
interference case.
She has security
because she's received death threats.
And then there's Manhattan D.A.
Alvin Bragg,
who is trying
Trump for his alleged hush money payments
to an adult film star.
Trump has ripped posted
a picture of himself with a baseball bat
next to Trump's apartment
next to Brad's head.
It's not very subtle here.
And the judge in this case,
in this Manhattan
case, has warned Trump
through his attorneys, quote,
not to make any statements
that would incite any violence or threats
against any officials.
And in 2022,
when Senate Republicans
joined Senate Democrats
in a vote,
a pretty simple one
to keep the government open,
Trump said
that Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell had a death wish.
If you listen to people from the Trump
White House,
they'll tell you
the violence is the point.
It is the feature,
not the bug
Here's what Cassidy Hutchinson,
former aide
to Trump's
chief of staff, Mark
Meadows, told my colleague Jake Tapper
just this week.
Donald Trump
knows the impact of his words when he
on January six
and he wanted to go to the Capitol.
Everything that that was intentional.
The Mark Milley tweet
that you earlier
mentioned from this past weekend,
he knows the impact
that those words will have.
He knows that people will come out
and be violent against these people.
That's what he wants
It's intentional, she says.
That's what he wants.