Former President Donald Trump and General Mark Milley got into a shouting match over the president’s insistence that the general lead the military in operations against racial justice protesters during the summer of 2020, according to a new book.
In Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election, Mr Trump and the general are reported to have gotten into a shouting match over the then-president's plan to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to use the military to quash the nationwide protests.
"Seated in the Situation Room with [Attorney General Bill] Barr, Milley, and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials ... by announcing he’d just put Milley 'in charge,'" the book claims.
Gen. Milley then apparently confronted Mr Trump privately to tell him he did not have the authority to oversee such an operation.
"I said you're in f****** charge!" Mr Trump yelled at him.
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Gen. Milley yelled back "well, I'm not in charge!" which infuriated Mr Trump.
"You can't f****** talk to me like that," Mr Trump said.
That caused the general to turn to the others in the room and ask for help explaining to Mr Trump the implications of what he wanted to do.
"There's a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?" Gen. Milley asked.
Then-Attorney General Bill Barr confirmed Gen Milley's words, telling Mr Trump "he's right, Mr President. The general is right”.
Mr Trump told Axios through an aide that the scene depicted in the book never happened.
"This is totally fake news, it never ever happened. I'm not a fan of Gen. Milley, but I never had an argument with him and the whole thing is false. He never talked back to me. Michael Bender never asked me about it and it's totally fake news," he said.
He also added that if Gen. Milley had yelled at him, he would have fired him.
Axios also talked to Mr Bender, who defended his reporting.
"This exchange was confirmed by multiple senior administration officials during the course of hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of top Trump World aides for this book," he said.
He claimed that "contrary to Mr Trump's assertion”, he asked the former president for his side of the story but never replied.
Gen Milley has become a villain among the far-right in recent weeks over comments he made defending the teaching of America's history of racial injustice in the military.
Far-right conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson has spent several nights mocking the general, and Congressman Matt Gaetz suggested the US military failed to "win" in wars due to "woke" generals.
