We won't survive another Trump presidency

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

Read that quote again. I’ll wait.

Read it one more time …

Those chilling words came from the stiff upper lip of retired General Mark Milley. Milley was once the most powerful military person in uniform when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Trump and Biden.

They aren’t aimed at Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. They aren’t carefully targeted at any number of terrorist leaders inside or outside our country … they are a direct-hit on the man he once served under: the repulsive and anti-American Donald Trump.

This is absolutely breathtaking ...

It is not the first time Milley has warned America of Trump’s fascist tendencies — he did so expansively in The Atlantic’s sensational profile of the man: “The Patriot” last year — but it is by far his most direct broadside attack on the deranged loser, who lacks even a morsel of any redeeming character.

Milley re-upped these words of warning recently for Bob Woodward to use in his forthcoming book “War.”

I will refrain from expanding further on what I think about journalists who bury news for their fat profit, but it makes Milley’s words to Woodward that I led off this piece with no less stark or damning.

The normalization of the America-attacking Trump by our corporate media and the unhinged Republican Party has been the sorriest and most dangerous thing I have ever witnessed in my long professional life.

Trump is provably a bigot, a tax-cheat, a felon, a serial liar, a traitor, and a complete fraud. He verbally and physically abuses women, and writes love letters to dictators like the two murdering men I mentioned above.

He insults our military, our NATO allies, and lately has gone full-Hitler on the campaign trail spewing some of the most disgusting venom that has been heard in this country in 100 years. He calls his political opponents “vermin.” He has encouraged Americans to blame the Jews if he loses, and has accused hard-working immigrants of some of most abominable and heinous things imaginable including “raping our women” and “eating our pets” — just to name a few.

With his fresh comments and words of warning, Milley joins a small but slowly growing list of retired military heavyweights who are sounding the alarms and warning us of the dangerous man they served under.

Retired General John Kelly, who was once Trump’s Chief of Staff, said this on CNN nearly one year ago to the day, when asked about his former boss:

“What can I add that has not already been said? … A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

He wasn’t done:

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

Just last month — doesn’t it feel like a year ago? — another Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, saw the need to take to the editorial pages of the Washington Post to explain why Trump’s abhorrent political event on Arlington National Cemetery’s hallowed grounds obliterated the lines of decency. Nobody has ever explained this breach of honor better than Mullen:

“To intrude upon that scene — to visit politics upon it — is to do much more than violate those rules; it is to betray the very nature of Arlington. It is to mock the apolitical nature of our military and to dishonor the sacrifices made by those who rest there. Worse, it may lead others to think less of those sacrifices, to view them as smaller than they actually were. And that’s a travesty, no matter what the visitor may have intended.”

Retired three- and four-star generals, Mark Hertling and Wesley Clark, who along with Mullen, I got to know while Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes newspaper in Germany and Japan, have also strenuously warned us of the extreme dangers of another Trump presidency.

Clark said this in February:

“I do not say this lightly: The lives of every American, both in uniform and civilian, are at severe risk if Donald Trump wins this election.”

He, too, wasn’t done:

“For Trump to publicly signal to Vladimir Putin that he can take as much of Europe as he wants, and we will sit by and cheer him on, isn’t just breaking the promise the United States has made, and it isn’t just threatening Europe. It is encouraging World War III, which will hit our shores and cost American lives.
“It is the kind of statement that can only come from a deranged and twisted mind. I do not say this lightly: The lives of every American, both in uniform and civilian, are at severe risk if Donald Trump wins this election.”

“Deranged and twisted mind …”

If all this scares the hell out of you, it damn well should, because while these men have grudgingly used bombs to protect our nation’s interests, they most certainly are not bomb-throwers. They have spent their long careers choosing their words very wisely, because one slip-up can trigger unheard of and horrific consequences.

These men are telling us right now that the Republican nominee for president means this country harm, and for the life of me, I will never understand why our nation is not right now on wartime footing.

Why aren’t our national newspapers using their newsprint and reach to tell us every single day in plain words like these generals and admirals have, what is at stake in this election?

Why didn't our Justice Department move with alacrity to put this man where he most certainly belongs — behind bars?

We won’t survive another Trump presidency.

America will be toppled, and a madman will be given free rein to wage war and exact revenge on his own citizenry.

Look, you don’t have to listen to me when I tell you all these terrible things, but you’d be a damn fool not to trust the warnings of the professionals, who spent their careers protecting us from the worst men on the planet.

NOW READ: Trump keeps telling us he believes he’ll lose

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.