Tuesday, FNC host Tucker Carlson opened his program by reacting to a bombshell report General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his Chinese counterpart General Li Zuocheng on Oct. 30, 2020 and again on January 8 according to a Washington Post report based on the forthcoming book “Peril,” which is by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Carlson criticized Milley’s tactics, which he suggested was an effort to marginalize then-President Donald Trump.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: We almost never use the term “Deep State” on this show. There is something about it that sounds paranoid, even a little nutty. As just a few years ago, you mostly heard the phrase from relics on the far left, the kind of people who lecture you about the united fruit company and the toppling of Mosaddegh.
The term, then and now, suggests that our democracy is fake. Elections and domestic politics are just a sideshow, no matter who you vote for, in the end the same people still run everything.
That’s a pretty dark understanding of the American system. If you’re a normal person who grew up here, it is the last thing you want to believe about your own country. It seems crazy.
And then you read stories like this one.
According to reporting this summer, in the days after last November’s election, Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff held a meeting with senior military officials at The Pentagon. Milley wanted to inform them of what he described as a serious threat to national security, a threat so grave that it imperiled, quote, “the stability of the Republic.”
That threat Milley said was the sitting President of the United States.
Donald Trump had dared to question the election results. For this, Milley explained, the U.S. military might be required to use physical force against the President. We’re the guys with guns Milley said.
Apparently, he had been preparing for this moment. Milley had similar conversations with the Director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, as well as with the head of the NSA, Paul Nakasone. He had also spoken directly to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump’s chief political rivals.
Now according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Bob Costa, Milley apparently went even further than that.
On October 30 of last year, Woodward and Costa report, Milley called his counterpart in China. That’s a general called Li Zuocheng. Milley did not tell his boss, the President about this call either before he made it or after. Here was Milley’s message for the Chinese military, quote: “General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be OK. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
And then reportedly, Milley said this, quote: “General Li, you and I have known each other for five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Let that sink in. Quote: “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
So according to this account, our country’s top Defense officials secretly colluded with our chief military rival to undercut the elected President of the United States. How would you describe that? Deep State is not strong enough. That’s treason. It is a crime.
And apparently, Mark Milley is not the only person who was implicated in this crime. Others knew it was happening as it did. Our Intelligence Agencies almost certainly heard Mark Milley’s call. If they can read e-mails from a cable news show on FOX, what are the chances they were aware that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was speaking to a senior Chinese general and what they were saying? Well, a chance of about a hundred percent.
And yet, the NSA did nothing about it. The CIA meanwhile, was clearly fully on board with this. “We are on the way to a right-wing coup,” said Gina Haspel. She told Milley that. And in fact, there was a coup in progress, but it did not come from the right. It wasn’t brewing in Alabama, instead, a constellation of unelected government employees, loyal above all to the Democratic Party and to the permanent class in Washington, ignored the United States Constitution and that they invalidated the votes of tens of millions of American citizens.
How did they do that? Because they invalidated democracy.
Democracy doesn’t mean anything if the people you elect have no power, and Mark Milley did his best to make certain the elected President had no power.
In early January, Woodward and Costa report, Milley called another meeting of senior officials at the National Military Command Center. He informed this group that they reported to him, not to the elected President of the United States, and that’s not a small claim.
The National Military Command Center controls, among other things, the nuclear weapons inside our missile silos, as well as the nuclear weapons onboard our submarines.
So Mark Milley was seizing personal control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He went around the room and demanded that his officers submit to his authority, not the President’s. Milley told them to follow no orders without first consulting him.
According to Woodward and Costa, all present in the room agreed to this. So civilian control of the military was over. Mark Milley was in charge.
If this is true, it is one of the scariest things that has ever happened in this country. You often people say they’re worried about authoritarianism coming to America. Well it’s here. That’s what this is. It’s authoritarian government. It is government by unelected unaccountable leaders who are willing to use violence to preserve their power.
That’s what this book describes. It’s shocking.
Not surprisingly, our news media have spent the day celebrating it. It turns out the self-described defenders of democracy don’t really believe in the system they claim to revere. The idea of giving voters power over their own government repulses people like this.
So they are relieved to discover that in fact, our democracy is fake. Here’s a selection from some of today’s programming.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICK STENGEL, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: I would call General Milley a hero. He behaved in a heroic manner.
LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: But what he did was ensure the guardrails were in place, so I give him high marks for this based on what’s described in the book.
GEORGE WILL, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think Milley felt ill-used by the episode in Lafayette Square when he was used as a prop. So one can understand Milley’s anxieties.
BARRY MCCAFFREY, RETIRED U.S. ARMY OFFICER: We are in a period of extraordinary danger. I think General Milley is going to be treated very favorably by history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So you heard four people speak. The first guy you saw in that clip is Rick Stengel and he’s a moron, obviously, so there’s no surprise there. The second guy was some retired military official. But the last two — George Will and Barry McCaffrey — these are people who whatever you think of them or who they vote for, you would have imagined might defend American democracy when it came right down to it.
But no, they didn’t. They cheered its ending.
They’re happy to see Mark Milley secretly conspiring with the Chinese military to end civilian control of our Pentagon. So it turns out that’s the government they want and you should not forget that.
So now that we know all this, what happens next?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor