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Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired Gen. Mark Milley went from reportedly warning that President-elect Donald Trump is “fascist to the core” to saying that the United States will be fine under his leadership.
Many of Trump’s harshest critics have gone from cautioning that he would be a threat to democracy to speaking positively about how America will fare under him, now that he won the presidential election.
Milley’s purported claims about Trump being “fascist” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward appear to have gone by the wayside as he spoke about America’s future at a recent event.
“Bottom line is breathe deep, America’s going to be okay,” he told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle at a Pallas Foundation event shown on the network. “There is a lot of waves out there, but this is a big, strong country. 380 million people. Great institutions, great people, great workforce, and a great younger cohort of people that are gonna protect America.”
MSNBC also showed him speaking to their host at the same event and saying that the Pentagon has a long history of reforms from incoming Secretaries of Defense.
“Every single Secretary of Defense has come in with the idea of ‘reforming’ the Pentagon. It is extraordinarily difficult and it takes, in my view — first of all, it takes mature leadership and it takes an alliance, or an alignment, I should say, between the Hill, the senators and congressmen up on the Hill who pass the laws,” he said.
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Milley went on to argue that incoming Trump allies have the potential to bring “helpful” reforms to the Pentagon or reduce it to “rubble.”
“If all you’re going to do is come in with a wrecking ball and just blow things apart, then what you’re going to get is rubble. And if that’s what you want, that’s awesome if you want rubble, but that’s not going to defend the United States,” he said.
Milley added, “So we absolutely have to transform the Pentagon and it’s going to take an effort. And industry-outside guys like Elon, Vivek and whoever – sure, they can be very helpful but they – it has to be done correctly.”