Chairman Of ​Joint Chiefs Stays Up All Night Reading Mean Tweets, Questioning His Life Choices

We live in a very stupid moment of American history.

There is new reporting from NBC News on the extended silence of General Mark Milley*, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who finally apologized yesterday and expressed regret for his participation in Donald Trump's big fascist Bible tear-gassing photo op. His silence was conspicuous, because holy shit, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is going to participate in a sad declaration of fascism, as innocent Americans are attacked in the streets, and he's not going to say anything about that? Milley, you will remember, also spent time after the event strutting around the area in fatigues, so that was quite a visual, for the United States.

Well, we are not sure if we are making fun of Milley in this post or making fun of NBC News's phrasing, or maybe both, but it turns out Milley just agonized over it afterward like a common Susan Collins. He stayed up all night! Reading mean tweets! About himself! And he called all his friends like "Should I like resign or something?"

NBC News:

That evening, Milley spent hours looking at social media and reading news articles and saw dozens of people criticizing him for being at the photo op and walking around the city in his combat uniform, according to the defense officials. He stayed up much of the night reading social media. He also reached out to confidants, asking them for advice and discussing whether he should resign, the officials said.

He was just on Twitter the whole night reading people saying "MILLEY SUX" and "Thoroughly Modern Milley? More like Thoroughly LOSER FASCIST Milley!" and calling his friends for advice. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Was doing this. If NBC News's reporting is correct. (Certain officials NBC News spoke to disputed the characterization that Milley was just calling everybody like "LOL should i resign or something?")

Dunno if he was sitting cross-legged on his bed at the time. Or if a Trapper Keeper was involved.

Y'all, we really live in a stupid time in American history.

NBC News reports that Milley didn't know that a fascist Bible gassing was what they were doing that night. He didn't want to have his picture made. HONEST.

Also Milley just wants you to know, through whoever is talking to the press right now, that he REALLY was against all this in the first place. During a meeting in the Oval that day, Trump was all like "I want to use the Insurrection Act to do fascism and attack the American people with the military" and Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General Bill Barr were like "No, sir, no!"

Milley became so fired up explaining why using active-duty troops was dangerous that he shook his fists to emphasize his points, according to three defense officials familiar with the meeting.

He shook his fists, you guys! And then he spent all day trying to get the governors to activate their own National Guards, so maybe Trump wouldn't even need to do fascism by ordering the military to attack the people.

Oh yeah, and he was only wearing his fatigues because he was on his way to the FBI and "It didn't make sense to go all the way back to the Pentagon to change when he was already in the city," according to one of NBC News's sources. But then all of a sudden Trump called like "wanna do a fascism, bro?" and he had to go do a fascism with Trump. In combat fatigues! (On the other hand, though, "[A] military historian and four former aides to previous Joint Chiefs chairmen" told NBC News he really should have had a change of clothes in the car.)

Hey, remember that NBC News reporting where SecDef Esper swore he didn't know what Trump was about to do that night, which came soon after the backlash began? This article is a lot like that, except for all the anonymous sources. Same reporters, even.

To be clear, silliness aside, it is a big deal that Milley is finally apologizing for his role in all of this and telling us how he stayed up all night on Twitter that night. It's a big deal for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to very publicly distance himself from the commander-in-chief. (Trump, so far, isn't really reacting to Milley's apology. So far.)

And it really speaks, as we discussed yesterday, to just how much it's becoming baked in among the military brass and others in Washington that Trump's presidency is DOA and he's going to lose like a motherfucker in November.

We wonder if Milley ate some snacks while he was reading those mean tweets, though. Was he eating his feelings? Did he polish off a whole thing of Pringles and then open a second thing of Pringles before he was like "SIR NO SIR you cannot have a second thing of Pringles"?

We really need to know, for journalism.

* We called Milley "admiral" in a post yesterday, even though we've correctly identified him as "general" everywhere else. We blame "day-long brain fart" and "two power outages in one day" and apologize to our military readers, as we know shit like that matters. 

[ NBC News ]

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