A new crop of books about Donald Trump and his final days in office is set to be published in the coming months. One such book, "The Divider: Trump in the White House," from veteran reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, was excerpted in The New Yorker on Monday morning, complete with a previously unpublished resignation letter from General Mark Milley, Trump's final chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After mostly refraining from publicly criticizing Trump, top Trump officials are now running to make their disagreements with him clear. In response, Trump now says the men who he once boasted were "my generals" are "very untalented people and once I realized it, I did not rely on them, I relied on the real generals and admirals within the system."
As the Executive Editor at Texas National Security Review noted, the excerpt paints an image of a Trump White House that is "chilling."
Here are the 4 most explosive revelations from the excerpt into Trump's war with his generals.
"You fucking generals, why can't you be like the German generals?" a frustrated Trump reportedly asked his chief of staff, John Kelly.
"Which generals?" Kelly asked.
"The German generals in World War II," Trump responded.
"You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?" Kelly reminded the president.
"No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him," Trump insisted.
After Trump demanded the military be sent in to clear the Black Lives Matters protesters, Trump's generals refused.
"Those are the heroes,' Kelly told Trump. "In our society, there's only one group of people who are more heroic than they are — and they are buried over in Arlington."
Trump reportedly remained unmoved: "I don't want them. It doesn't look good for me."
In his letter, Milley told Trump, "You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people."
"I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people," Milley wrote. "The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people."
He continued: "It's now obvious to me that you don't understand that world order. You don't understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that."
"'The crazies have taken over,'" Pompeo told Milley during a conversation after the election at Milley's kitchen table, according to the authors.
