‘Dear God!’ CBS’s Brennan Gobsmacked By Comments From Gen. Milley Labeling Jan. 6 a Potential ‘Precursor’ to Revolution

CBS’ Margaret Brennan was shocked as she reacted to Mark Milley’s assessment that the storming of the U.S. Capitol might be a “precursor” to future political violence in America.

Brennan’s comments came during an interview she held with Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council official who was a major witness in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment over the Ukraine scandal.

As Hill assessed that right-wing populism in America is a greater threat than populism from the left, Brennan asked Hill to react to Peril, the book from Robert Costa and Bob Woodward that produced a number of stark revelations about the Trump presidency. Brennan specifically focused on how General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted comparing the Capitol riot to the “great dress rehearsal” ahead of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

“You’re a Russia analyst, you know immediately what that phrase is, which is what Lenin called an uprising that preceded the revolution,” Brennan said. “I read that and I said, ‘Dear God!’ The general is saying that this is a precursor potentially to further violence? Is this overstating things in a historical sense?”

Hill responded that Milley’s comments were not an overstatement because “we all saw in real time what happened on January 6 at the Capitol building, and General Milley was absolutely right.” She went on to say that storming the Capitol Building is the kind of historical event that has lead to civil unrest in the past.

This is exactly the thing that you think of in historical revolutions. Storming the Bastille during the French Revolution, storming the Winter Palace during the Russian Revolution that General Milley was alluding to. And as he was saying, we’ve seen many historical episodes where there is violence. People discount it. They think that this is just a passing occurrence. Vice President Pence has been downplaying it, even though he would have been targeted. He was targeted. They wanted to lynch him. And then people sweeping this away, saying nothing happened here. And the next time around, you get the real thing where people actually do seize those major buildings.

Hill added that skeptics should hear from the refugees of war-torn societies before they dismiss the Capitol riot as a one-off event.

Watch above, via CBS.