Former President Trump asked his then-White House chief of staff John Kelly why he couldn’t be like the German generals loyal to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, according to an upcoming book.
In an excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in The White House,” by New York Times writer Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, the authors depict the former president glorifying Nazi generals’ loyalty and lamenting that his own military didn’t match that obedience.
“‘You f—ing generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?’” Trump asked Kelly, according to the book’s authors. When Kelly countered that Nazi generals had tried to kill their leader, the former president insisted that they had been unflaggingly loyal.
The excerpt, published in The New Yorker, follows former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley as he assumes the position against caution from Kelly and former Defense Secretary James Mattis.
The authors reveal a resignation letter that Milley wrote in June 2020 upon realizing Trump was “doing great and irreparable harm” to the U.S. and politicizing the military, following the now-infamous photo op of Trump and his advisers in Lafayette Square, shortly after Black Lives Matter protesters had been tear-gassed in order to clear the area.
Milley never sent the letter, but reportedly decided instead to fight the former president from the inside.
According to the new excerpt, the former chairman “feared that Trump’s ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of his own lies about the election would lead him to seek a ‘Reichstag moment,’ ” referring to Hitler’s 1933 power grab, wherein he capitalized on a fire in the parliament building to stoke fears and seize control of the country.
Milley reportedly worried that Trump would intentionally cause a conflict — at home or abroad — to justify preventing the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election.
In the draft resignation letter shared in the excerpt, Milley wrote that Trump was undoing the work of those who fought in the world wars.
“And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas … That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism,” Milley allegedly wrote to Trump.
“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.”
“The Divider: Trump in The White House” is slated for publication in September.