The Insurrection of General Milley “Okay, I get it, it's illegal, it's wrong.”

“The riots over the summer, you know, I could make a case that those riots were riots organic to an aggrieved community that perceived that they had various injustices throughout their life,” General Mark A Milley told the J6 Committee. “It was sheer, unmitigated anger that expressed itself in the form of mass violence and rioting. And, okay, I get it, it’s illegal, it’s wrong.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had previously justified the study of “white rage”, went on to defend the riots and the double standard at the heart of the J6 Committee.

“I don’t think the intent of those riots was to overturn the United States Government and to destroy the Constitution of the United States of America,” he argued.

The mobs assaulting police officers, burning flags, attacking federal buildings in sieges, like the one in Portland, reminiscent of Fort Sumter, and calling for the destruction of America under the guidance of an organization of “trained Marxists” demonstrated that it was an insurrection.

And Gen. Milley’s testimony showed that he sympathized with the insurrectionists.

An account had described Milley pointing to a bust of Lincoln during the Black Lives Matter riots and telling Trump, “That guy had an insurrection. What we have, Mr. President, is a protest.”

The J6 testimony provided an opportunity to dig into Milley’s definition of an insurrection.

On the one hand, Gen. Milley conceded that, “All the President has to do is walk outside the White House and yell three times, you know, ‘Insurrectionists, disperse.’ And he just has to yell it, right? And then he can do it, according to the law of 1807 or whatever year it was, right?”

I am the same person. My biggest concern about Trump running for reelection is his demonstrated inability to select high level talent for critical positions essential for helping him carry out his agenda. One person cannot do everything. With committed, talented leaders assisting him he may be able to make a dent in the swamp.

Trump had numerous failures in key positions. The three most critical appointments in a new administration are: Vice President, White House Chief of staff, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense. Three of his first appointments - Reince Priebus, Rex Tillerson, and James Mattis were failures and each lasted less than two years. They were not the only ones. It can be argued Mike Pence was a failure as well. There were a string of other failures in critical positions from outside the beltway (Anthony Scaramucci being perhaps the most dramatic) as well as inside the beltway (General Kelly as Chief of Staff, Mark Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for example).

Trump may be able to win reelection. Can he make headway rooting out corruption and reforming the entrenched bureaucracy? Only if he has a team of talented and committed professionals working with him heading each department. He unfortunately failed his first time out.

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