Gen. Mark Milley Uncomfortably Dodges Question on His Prior ‘White Rage’ Testimony: It’s ‘Complicated’
During a press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Gen. Mark Milley was asked about his previous comments about Critical Race Theory and his testimony about “white rage,” claiming the subject is “too complicated” for him to answer with limited time.
Milley’s comments at a June hearing on Capitol Hill became a topic of debate and conversation for weeks, after he requested specifically for time to address the topic of critical race theory in the military, during which he brought up the concept of “White rage” as something that both he and the military in general need to explore and understand.
“In that hearing, you said to Congress that you wanted, in your words, to ‘understand White rage,’ and ‘what it is that caused thousands of people to assault the capitol,” asked CNN’s Barbara Starr, “What led you to the conclusion of White rage and, since you’ve talked about it publicly before Congress, in your view what is White rage, and why and when should the U.S. military be concerned with that?”
“In the minute or two left,” said Gen. Milley to begin his answer. “First of all, I’m not going to address specifically White rage, or Black rage, or Asian rage, or Irish rage, or English rage, or German rage, or any other rage, right?”
He said that the events of January 6 will be “sorted out” by historians and commissions, but that it is important as the military to understand “our own society” and the society that military members are “coming from.”
“I think that’s important for leadership to study,” he concluded.
“You said the words ‘White rage’,” Starr pressed in response to Milley watering down his previous comments by listing other races and nationalities as forms of forms of “rage.”
“Yeah, I said I’m not going to discuss it right now. I think it’s a very complicated topic and we don’t have the time to go into the nuance of it right this minute,” Milley said, having taken just enough time to pad his previous remarks with waffling. “I can do that later? I’ll be happy to do that later. But right now is not a good time to do that.”
“It’s too complicated,” he added.
Watch the clip above, via the Department of Defense.
