Former President Donald Trump on Friday said that General Mark Milley should be “court-martialed and tried” if he believed that the former president sought to carry out a coup, referencing an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Trump has pushed back against the excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” which said that Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed the possibility of a coup with friends, legislators, and colleagues.
“The writings within these third-rate books are Fake News, and ‘General’ Milley (who [former Defense Secretary James] Mattis wanted to send to Europe in order to get rid of him), if he said what was reported, perhaps should be impeached, or court-martialed and tried,” the former president said in a statement. “He tries to be a tough guy, which he is not, but he choked beyond belief as soon as a microphone was stuffed in front of his face or, at the mere sight of the Fake News Media.”