Gen. Milley Annihilated Trump in a Resignation Letter He Drafted But Never Sent: You Are Doing ‘Great and Irreparable Harm to My Country’

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, criticized former President Donald Trump in a never-sent draft resignation letter, according to an excerpt from Susan Glasser and Peter Baker’s forthcoming book The Divider.

The letter was reportedly drafted on June 8th, a week after the events of Lafayette Square, where Black Lives Matter protestors were violently cleared from the area for Trump to get his infamous photo opportunity, posing outside the damaged St. John’s Church across from the White House, bible in hand.

Milley’s resignation letter displays a rift between Trump and the nation’s military leadership toward the end of his term in office.

“I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the letter read, “Thank you for the honor of appointing me as a senior ranking officer.”

The letter continued, with Milley claiming that he could no longer justify the actions of Trump:

The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.

The article in the New Yorker, additionally detailed how the former president grew increasingly irritated by his national security officials, who he believed were not displaying the appropriate level of loyalty.

In July of 2021, Trump pushed back on reports that Milley was deeply concerned that Trump would start a coup to remain in office after losing to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The former president argued that he wouldn’t have trusted Milley to help him perform a coup, even though he claims that was not his intent.