‘Let Me Tell You What I Actually Said’: Mark Milley, GOP Senator Clash Over ‘Heads-Up’ Call to China

Tensions flared between Gen. Mark Milley and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) over a reported warning the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made to China about U.S. military activities.

In Milley’s testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, his backchannel conversations with counterparts in the Chinese military, as Bob Woodward and Robert Costa describe in the book Peril, were a recurring topic. Milley’s actions have raised questions as to whether he was undermining former President Donald Trump, but he disputed that notion by saying his calls were in accordance to Department of Defense guidelines, and were done in conjunction with defense officials including Mark Esper and Chris Miller.

As Sullivan questioned Milley and his colleagues later in the day, he posed a rhetorical question to Milley: “If you think the Chinese Communist Party decided to invade Taiwan, would their military leadership call and give you a heads-up?”

Milley responded by saying such an event “would be an obvious thing to pick up on” because of how many communications and other indicators that would entail.

Sullivan soon got to the point by saying “you are quoted in the Woodward book as telling the top commander, ‘If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time.’ Is that true, General Milley?”

“Let me tell you what I actually said,” Milley began, though Sullivan cut him off to say “so that’s not true? I hope its not.”

“What I said is if there is going to be a war, if there’s going to be an attack, there will be a lot of calls and tension ahead of time,” Milley said. Sullivan cut him off again to refer back to what Milley said earlier about how Trump wouldn’t launch an attack.

“That is true,” Milley said, “and I was communicating to my Chinese counterpart — on instructions by the way — to de-escalate the situation, and I told him that we are not going to attack. President Trump has no intent to attack, and I told him that repeatedly, and I told him if there was going to be an attack, there will be plenty of communications going back and forth, your intel system are gonna pick it up.”

Sullivan and Milley once again clashed about whether the call was a “heads-up” to China, but the senator was told that his time was up.

Watch above, via Fox News.