'Epically dangerous': GOP analyst warns Trump declaring Milley deserves 'death' must be 'taken seriously'

Following ex-President Donald Trump's recent verbal attack on the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, ex-Republican strategist Steve Schmidt urges lawmakers to take the MAGA hopeful's words "seriously."

On Friday, September 22, the former president wrote, "if the Fake News reporting is correct," General Milley "was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act."

During Monday's episode of MSNBC's The ReidOut, Schmidt told host Joy Reid, "This is an epically dangerous moment."

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She added, "And to make that even more explicit, he has essentially threatened General Mark Milley with death. And he has signaled to his MAGA fanatic fan base that he is going to die. This is a hero military United States general, that was the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he explicitly issued a threat against him because he knows there will be no recourse and that his followers have no problem with that. His party has no problem with it. Where is the condemnation from the Republican party for Donald Trump issuing a written threat against General Milley? I've heard nothing but silence."

Schmidt replied, "Total silence, as there has been total silence about the threats, about the intimations towards violence that we've seen play out over many years. There will be a moment where these intimations and threats trigger actual real violence. There are strong arguments to be made that it has already. We know for certain that radicalized individuals have acted. We know for certain having watched with our own eyes on January 6th how the incitements translate to violence. But it seems to me that there is something growing, growling, menacing out there and it is not being confronted. Now, I do want to say this, the Democratic party must condemn Senator Robert Menendez, roll him up in a carpet and proverbially throw him over the side of the deck. Because corruption accrues to Donald Trump's benefit. Chaos accrues to Donald Trump's benefit. If the race is about, 'Well, both sides are corrupt,' even if it is a false equivalence, it accrues to Trump's benefit. The only way out of this, the only way through this, is an appeal to better. So, the country has been in a profound crisis before. It is a feature of democracies that they awaken late to threats. Winston Churchill talked about "The Gathering Storm." He talked about The Second World War as the unnecessary war. But what is coming is nearing."

He emphasized, "And when you have a former president so unhinged today, threatening a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or current chairman about to retire with death, threatening journalists with shutdown and violence, and threatening to imprison political opponents, it has to be taken seriously. When you have the entirety of a political party that remains silent, they are complicit with it. I mean, we are at the hour that John Kennedy warned about when he said, "Beware the foolish men who seek power by trying to ride the back of the tiger only to wind up inside it.' That's where we are. And so this moment requires an ability to communicate the threat but also optimistically, where are we going as we move away from this. But nobody should be confused at all about how close we are to the edge of the abyss in this country, judging from Donald Trump's words, he means it."

Watch the video below or at this link.

'He means it': Ex-GOP strategist on Trump's suggestion that Gen. Mark Milley deserves deathyoutu.be

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