Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor said Wednesday morning that senior officials wished former President Donald Trump would “chain himself to the Resolute Desk” so the American people could see he was “not stable to lead the country.”
CNN host Brianna Keilar asked Taylor about new bombshell claims from Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The authors allege in their upcoming book “Peril” that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was “certain” that Trump “had gone into a serious mental decline” after his loss in the 2020 election and was worried that the former president could “go rogue.”
Milley allegedly held a secret meeting at the Pentagon two days after the Capitol riot, where he told senior military officials not to take orders about a nuclear strike from anyone — including Trump — without consulting him first. The authors also allege that Milley had two secret phone calls where he assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that he would give him advance notice in the case of a U.S. attack on China. (RELATED: Joy Reid Calls Gen. Mark Milley ‘Heroic,’ ‘Patriot’)
MIT nuclear strategy expert Vipin Narang told The Washington Post the president has “sole authority” to order a nuclear launch and that anyone refusing to follow the president’s orders “would be doing so illegally and risk the charge of mutiny.”
“Look, I think the operative words here are ‘serious mental decline,'” Taylor said. “The president’s own hand-picked top U.S. military adviser is saying that he thinks that the president of the United States is in such a serious mental state that he’s got to take steps to protect the country.”
“And I’ll tell you there’s one person who was very close to the president, very senior in this administration who told me that after January 6th, it was their hope that Donald Trump would chain himself to the Resolute Desk so they had to go in, saw it off and carry him out in a straitjacket so the American people would see what we have all seen behind the scenes that this man is not stable to lead the country,” he added.
A range of Republican officials criticized Milley’s behavior, including Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy. Alexander Vindman said Milley should resign since he broke the chain of command and set an “extremely dangerous precedent.”