On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) stated that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley needs to deny reporting that he vowed to warn China of a pending attack by the U.S. if former President Donald Trump ordered one, and if Milley does deny the story, Bob Woodward needs to produce the evidence he has to back up his story.
Rubio said, [relevant remarks begin around 3:00] “I want everybody to understand, look, you don’t have to like Donald Trump to be concerned about this, okay. You have a — the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a military leader, basically ignoring the Constitution, deciding he’s going to call a potential adversary and an enemy of the United States and collude with them and tell them, if I’m ever ordered to do something, I’m going to tell you about it first, and also break the chain of command when it comes to the nuclear codes of this country and its control. I honestly hope that tomorrow we’re going to have a statement from Gen. Milley saying this is an absolute lie. This never happened. Because the alternative is we basically now live in a country where a general can decide, I don’t like what a president’s doing, I don’t think a president is in his right mind, I’m going to ignore his warning and I’m going to collude with our potential enemies to prevent our president, elected by the people, from taking action, which, by the way, in this case, there’s no sign that that action he was trying to prevent was ever going to happen. Imagine if tomorrow, Gen. Milley decides I think Joe Biden is senile, and so, you know what, I’m not going to follow his orders. I’m going to collude with Russia and China to prevent us from acting. … It is the essence [of] a military coup, for lack of a better term. That’s what it would equate to.”
He added that if the story is denied by Milley, “Woodward would then be compelled to produce the evidence that he has about whether it happened or did not happen. I think, at that point, Woodward would have to come forward and show it.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett