It’s not a state secret that Donald Trump is an extraordinarily petty, spiteful person whose list of grudges would require more pages than a Charles Dickens novel. So no one could have been surprised that as soon as he returned to the White House, an official portrait of Gen. Mark Milley vanished from the walls of the Pentagon.
The surprise is that Trump is not content with removing images of the man who served him (and Joe Biden) as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the U.S. military. Trump is also relishing the opportunity to put Milley’s life in danger.
Not many things Trump does register with the force they would have for any other president, but this one shows he still has the power to shock.
What Trump did was to strip Milley of the security detail that has protected him for years from the threat of assassination by the government of Iran. In 2020, after Trump ordered a drone strike that killed the top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, The New York Times reports, “Iranian groups put a price on General Milley’s head.”
He, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., “moved to the top of Iran’s retaliatory kill list, U.S. officials have said.” Also in the crosshairs is John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser. He’s been deprived of his security detail, even though an Iranian national was charged in 2021 for an alleged murder-for-hire plot aimed at him.
Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state at the time of the Soleimani strike, and Brian Hook, who was the State Department’s special representative for Iran, have also lost their protection.
Trump, bear in mind, detests the Iranian government, and it was his decision to kill Soleimani that spurred Iran’s desire for revenge. And there is no reason to think the regime has decided to forgive and forget. Trump, in fact, realizes as much: On Tuesday, he said that he has “left instructions” that if Iran’s rulers were to assassinate him, “they would be obliterated” — not realizing that presidents can’t exercise power posthumously.
These four are men that “the U.S. intelligence community believes Iran wants to assassinate,” according to Politico. “The moves set off alarm bells for Republicans on the Hill because those details were viewed as a critical fail-safe against Iranian operatives inside the United States.” The Iranians want to kill them, and Trump has chosen to make their job easier.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a staunch Trump ally, has urged him to restore the protection, as has Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
But Trump is nonchalant about the grave risks the men face as a direct result of their service to him. “He doesn’t believe these people should have the right to have security clearances and private details for the rest of their lives,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, citing the cost to taxpayers.
Trump, keep in mind, is entitled to such protection for the rest of his life, no matter the burden on taxpaying Americans. But he is more than willing to put the lives of his former aides in serious jeopardy.
It’s not hard to identify the reasons he loathes Milley and Bolton. Milley publicly apologized for letting himself be pulled into Trump’s 2020 ostentatious walk across Lafayette Square, which had been forcibly cleared of peaceful protesters. He later told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core.” Bolton has pronounced Trump “unfit to be president.”
Trump has called Bolton a “moron.” He has been even more vitriolic toward Milley. Furious at the general for making a phone call on Jan. 6, 2021, to reassure his Chinese counterpart, Trump said that conversation was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
The regrettable fact is that thanks to Trump, Milley may have less to worry about from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards than from some fanatic who takes the removal of his security detail as an invitation to kill him. This same zealot could hardly be faulted for believing that, after the bloody deed was done, he could expect a presidential pardon.
Milley is a Green Beret and a decorated combat veteran who has put his life on the line innumerable times for his country, never dreaming that his government would ultimately become his enemy. His treatment is proof that however vicious you imagine Trump to be, he will always exceed expectations.
Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, now appear the first week of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.
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