US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump intensifies nativist message with sweeping proposal to deport immigrants

      by

      Donald Trump intensified his politics of nativism and xenophobia on Friday by announcing a sweeping plan to deport Venezuelans he claimed have “infected” a once-peaceful city in Colorado.The Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in Aurora on a stage adorned with posters displaying mugshots of people in prison-orange uniforms with descriptions including “illegal immigrant gang members from Venezuela”.Trump told the crowd: “I’m announcing today that, upon taking office, we will have an ‘Operation Aurora’ at the federal level to expedite the removals of these savage gangs.” He pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any non-citizen from a country that the US is at war with.“We will send elite squads of Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], border patrol and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country,” he continued as the crowd roared approval.If they return to the US, Trump said, they will serve an automatic 10 years in prison without parole. “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. With your vote, we will achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters. It’s going to go very quickly,” he said.The rally represented a detour for Trump, since Colorado is not a battleground state and looks certain to vote for his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. But recent events offered him an opportunity to exploit a swirl of local rumours to push his anti-immigrant message.Aurora, a city of about 340,000 people near Denver, hit headlines in August when a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing Venezuelan immigrants. Trump amplified the story and falsely portrayed the city as overrun by members of the Venezeulan gang Tren de Aragua, or TDA.Authorities say the incident happened in a single block and the area is again safe, noting that the local crime rate is actually declining. Aurora’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated” and insisted: “The narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”TDA traces its origins back more than a decade to a notorious prison. In July, the Biden administration issued a sanction against the gang, placing it alongside MS-13 from El Salvador and the mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of transnational criminal organisations, and offering $12m in rewards for the arrests of three leaders.At Friday’s rally, Trump played a series of news clips, accompanied by dramatic music, describing TDA’s crimes and the murder of US citizens by undocumented immigrants, as well as some seemingly evasive answers by Harris, the vice-president, whom Trump branded a “criminal” and the “worst border tsar” in the country’s history.“My message today is very simple,” he said. “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become president of the United States.”The former president promised that 5 November, when the election is held, will be “liberation day”, prompting chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd.“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered. These towns have been conquered and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country and we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of our country,” he said.Trump added later: “We’re talking a lot about Venezuela, because Aurora is really infected by Venezuela, but they’re coming from all countries.”The remark recalled past dehumanising language in which Trump claimed undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and, earlier this week, suggested that those suspected in homicide cases “have bad genes”.View image in fullscreenIn similar fashion on Friday, Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins, pointed to the posters on stage as he addressed the crowd before Trump’s appearance.“Look at all these photos around me,” Miller said. “Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want in your city?” The crowd roared “no” in reply.The ex-president has long made immigration his signature issue and promised to stage the biggest deportation operation in US history if he returns to the White House. In recent months, he has targeted specific smaller communities that have seen significant arrivals of immigrants, with tensions flaring locally over resources and some longtime residents expressing misgivings about sudden demographic changes.More than 40,000 immigrants have arrived in the Denver metro area over the past two years, including many Venezuelan families fleeing poverty and violence. But Colorado’s Democratic leaders accuse Trump and other Republicans of overstating problems in Aurora.Representative Jason Crow told the Associated Press: “What is occurring is minimal and isolated. And to be clear, it’s never acceptable, right? We never say any level is acceptable. But it’s not a surge. It’s not a change. There is no takeover of any part of this city, of any apartment complex. It has not happened. It is a lie.”Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, also have spread falsehoods about a community in Springfield, Ohio, where they said Haitian immigrants had been stealing and eating pets. The disinformation campaign led to bomb threats, school closures and forced evacuations.Trump has said he would revoke the temporary protected status that allows Haitians to stay in the US because of widespread poverty and violence in their home nation.Democrats have condemned Trump for tanking a border security bill negotiated in the Senate by both parties because it could have neutralised immigration as an issue. Harris told a Univision town hall in Nevada on Thursday: “He would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump campaign asks for more security amid fears of Iran assassination attempt

      by

      Donald Trump’s team has asked for officials to provide him with a dramatic array of military protections as the presidential campaign wraps, including travel in military aircraft and vehicles, according to reports.Trump’s campaign has also requested ramped-up flight restrictions around his residences and rallies, and “ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states” for his team’s use, the Washington Post reported, citing internal emails and sources familiar with the requests. The New York Times first reported on these requests.The demands were both “extraordinary and unprecedented”, the Post noted, as not a single recent presidential nominee has been shuttled in military aircraft before an election. A source told the Times that these sorts of high-level, classified military resources are used solely for sitting presidents.Trump’s asks followed intelligence provided to his campaign staff that Iran is seeking to assassinate him and after his team expressed worry about drones and missiles targeting him. Trump was shot during a failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on 13 July, and a man was arrested in an alleged assassination attempt on 15 September; neither gunman is believed to have had Iranian ties.Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager, reportedly emailed Secret Service head Ronald L Rowe Jr in recent days, expressing displeasure with the agency’s handling of safety. Wiles claimed in a missive that Trump had had to cancel a campaign rally at the last minute due to a “lack of personnel”, resulting in him being placed in a small room with journalists.Wiles claimed that campaign planning efforts were being stifled over threats, and said that Trump intended to host many additional events as the race nears its end. She further said that officials had not managed to give thorough enough plans to keep Trump safe.Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican representative and Trump supporter, also wrote to the Secret Service requesting military aircraft for Trump, or ramped-up safeguards for his private airplane, the Post said.Asked about reports that Trump’s campaign had requested additional safety measures such as military assets, the Secret Service said in a statement that Trump was receiving “the highest levels of protection”.“Assistance from the Department of Defense is regularly provided for the former president’s protection, to include explosive ordnance disposal, canine units and airlift transportation,” said Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson.Guglielmi also said the Secret Service was placing short-term flight restrictions “over the former president’s residence and when he travels”, and “additionally, the former president is receiving the highest level of technical security assets which include unmanned aerial vehicles, counter unmanned aerial surveillance systems, ballistics and other advanced technology systems”.Kamala Harris, Trump’s presidential rival, is provided protection from the US marines as vice-president. She travels on Air Force Two, which is a military plane.The Trump campaign has already begun taking increased precautions with traveling. This has included sometimes splitting his motorcade, and placing him in airplanes that do not bear his name.Sources told the Post that some of Trump’s counselors believe, despite a dearth of evidence, that the two attempts on his life were Iran-backed.A Pakistani man was charged in August with allegedly wanting to hire assassins to kill an unidentified US politician. The man has ties to Iran, per reports.US intelligence officials said in September that Iranian hackers stole information from Trump’s campaign and sent it to media outlets, as well as Joe Biden’s one-time campaign. Documents unsealed in September alleged that three Iranian nationals had participated in a broad, multiyear hacking effort against Trump that also targeted one of his lawyers, one-time CIA members and an ex-US ambassador, the Post said.Additional campaign officials have been apprised that they too were targeted by Iranian hackers, per the newspaper. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.When asked about the reports during a White House press conference on Friday, Biden said that he had told his administration to provide Trump “all that he needs”.“I’ve told the department to give him every single thing he needs,” the president said. Biden also said that when it comes to security, Trump should be treated “as [if] he were a sitting president”.“Give all that he needs, if it fits within that category, that’s fine,” Biden said. “But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t.”Biden did offer a humorous quip when asked about Trump’s requests. “As long as he doesn’t ask for F-15s,” Biden said – before following up with: “No, I’m being facetious.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Roger Stone calls for ‘armed guards’ at polling spots in leaked video

      by

      The longtime Donald Trump ally and friend Roger Stone said Republicans should send “armed guards” to the polls in November to ensure a Trump victory, according to video footage by an undercover journalist.The video, first published by Rolling Stone, shows an embittered Stone, still angry about the 2020 election and ready to fight in 2024. Stone described the former US president’s legal strategy of constant litigation to purge voter rolls in swing states.“We gotta fight it out on a state-by-state basis,” said Stone. “We’re already in court in Wisconsin, we’re already in court in Florida.”When the journalist, posing as a member of a rightwing voter turnout organization, pressed Stone for details on efforts to make sure Trump wins in 2024, Stone told him that the campaign has to “be ready”.“When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you dispute it,” said Stone. In Detroit in 2020, there was a chaotic scene at a ballot counting center when GOP vote challengers pounded on the walls of the center and demanded to be let in.Filmed at an August event in Jacksonville, Florida, called A Night with Roger Stone, the footage also reveals Stone’s lasting anger toward former attorney general Bill Barr, who he calls “a traitorous piece of human garbage”.While in office, Barr acted as a staunch Trump ally, even pushing for a lighter sentence for Stone, when the operative was found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice in connection with a congressional inquiry into Russian interference during the 2016 election. Barr lost favor with the former president when he declined to publicly back Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, drawing outrage from Trump’s closest allies.“Once we get back in, he has to go to prison,” Stone exclaimed. “He has to go to prison, he’s a criminal.”Stone’s apparent lust for legal retribution echoes Trump’s own vow, which he has stated repeatedly to the press and at his rallies, to prosecute his political opponents. It is a promise that Trump could more likely make good on, given the supreme court’s rulings this year to expand the powers of the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe journalist in the video was posing as someone involved with Lion of Judah, a rightwing effort to recruit election-skeptical Christians to enlist as poll workers in swing states in order to collect evidence of voter fraud.Joshua Standifer, who leads Lion of Judah, describes the effort as a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers”. In the video, Stone appeared unfamiliar with Standifer or his work. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris accuses Trump of ‘playing politics’ with hurricane disaster relief

      by

      Kamala Harris has accused Donald Trump of “playing politics” with disaster relief amid growing criticisms that the former president has tried to exploit Hurricanes Helene and Milton with a flurry of lies and disinformation as he bids to gain the edge in the race for the White House.The US vice-president’s comments came amid increasing evidence that the two storms, which have left a trail of death and destruction in several southern states, are threatening to upset the calculus for next month’s presidential election.Asked at a town hall meeting in Las Vegas organized by Univision, the US Spanish-language TV network, to address complaints about the federal government’s response, Harris aimed pointed comments at Trump, although without naming him.“In this crisis – like in so many issues that affect the people of our country – I think it so important that leadership recognises the dignity [of those affected],” she said.“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she added, as she campaigned in the swing state of Nevada on Thursday.Harris’s comments followed a full-frontal attack on Trump – who has falsely accused the White House and Harris of, among other things, deliberately withholding aid from Republican areas and diverting funds to illegal immigrants – from Joe Biden.The US president accused Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, of spreading “outright lies”.“They’re being so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff,” Biden told journalists at the White House on Thursday. Addressing Trump specifically, he said: “Get a life, man. Help these people.”Trump and his running mate, the US senator for Ohio JD Vance, have maintained a drumbeat of criticism of Biden and Harris accusing them of deliberately engineering an inadequate response to Hurricane Helene in Republican voting areas, after the storm ripped through Georgia and North Carolina – two swing states vital to the outcome of the 5 November election – even while fellow Republican politicians have praised the recovery effort.The former president has called the rescue operation worse than the response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005 – killing 1,400 – and left an indelible stain on the presidency of George W Bush.“This hurricane has been a bad one, Kamala Harris has left them stranded,” he told a rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?”Harris has taken some time away from the campaign trail this month to participate in White House situation room conferences and meet staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which has led the response to the hurricanes. Helene was the deadliest since Katrina.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome Democratic strategists have voiced fears that the need to respond to the twin storms is depriving Harris of vital time in her quest to defeat Trump as the campaign enters its final weeks.Deanne Criswell, Fema’s director, has called the onslaught of disinformation and conspiracy theories “absolutely the worst I have ever seen” and warned that it is hindering relief efforts.With polls showing the election race tighter than ever, Trump has focused particular attention on Harris. “She didn’t send anything or anyone at all. Days passed. No help as men, women and children drowned,” he told a rally in Pennsylvania.He has put special emphasis on North Carolina, where polls show the two candidates neck-and-neck and which has a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Some Republican politicians have condemned the spread of misinformation but generally without naming Trump.Harris also told CNN on Wednesday. “It is dangerous – it is unconscionable, frankly, that anyone who would consider themselves a leader would mislead desperate people to the point that those desperate people would not receive the aid to which they are entitled,” she said. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trial of Arizona officials who refused to certify 2022 election delayed until next year

      by

      The criminal trial of two rural Arizona county supervisors who initially refused to certify election results in 2022 will not occur before this year’s elections after it was again delayed.Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, two of the three supervisors in the Republican-led Cochise county, face charges of conspiracy and interfering with an election officer, brought by the Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes.The trial has been pushed back multiple times and is now set for 30 January 2025, the court docket shows. The delay was mutually agreed upon, the attorney general’s office said.Despite the county’s typically low profile, the trial is being watched nationally as elections experts anticipate a potential wave of local officials refusing to certify results if Trump loses. The red county, set on the US-Mexico border, has a population of about 125,000.Charges like those against Crosby and Judd should send a message to many of those who would consider taking similar actions, democracy advocates say.“The fact that two supervisors who failed to certify results on time in the past are facing criminal charges does serve as a deterrent to other officials who might be considering obstructing the certification process in Arizona this year,” said Travis Bruner, the Arizona state policy advocate at Protect Democracy. “And I think that deterrent exists, even though the trial isn’t going to occur before the election.”Cochise county became a hotbed for election denialism after the 2020 election, as did the rest of Arizona, because Trump lost the state in an upset for Republicans. Crosby and Judd first tried to conduct a full hand count of ballots in their county in the 2022 midterms, a move which was deemed illegal. The quest for a hand count included support from Republican state lawmakers.Crosby and Judd then refused to certify the election until a court ordered them to do so, and even then, Crosby still did not vote to approve it. These actions have added costs to county taxpayers and gripped local meetings for many months.In US elections, local elections officials oversee the counting of ballots, often referred to as the canvass. County supervisors, like those in Cochise, then sign off on those results in what’s known as a certification. Think of the supervisors in these instances as scorekeepers, Bruner said. The supervisor’s role is to acknowledge the count, not act as a referee. This function is mandatory, not discretionary, he said.In anticipation of potential certification battles after election day this year, pro-democracy groups have emphasized the illegality of such refusals and the role the courts play in enforcing laws on certification. Whether a wave of certification delays or refusals actually occurs depends in large part on who wins the election, and the degree of the pressure campaign that comes afterward.These efforts likely won’t hinder the ultimate election results because courts will step in to require certification, but they can cause delay, allowing for disinformation to swirl and and sow doubt in elections, Bruner said.“What we’re seeing in Arizona and across the country is really that conspiracy theorists and folks who want to subvert election results, if they don’t like the results, have targeted the certification process as a place to sort of place their doubt in elections and try to change the results of elections that they don’t like,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA recent report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that 35 local elected officials across eight states had previously refused to certify election results and could be in a position to do so again this year.Crosby and Judd are two of them. Supporters of the two had previously told them they would cover their legal expenses, and an anonymous donor paid an initial $10,000 legal retainer. Crosby has sought donations on a crowdfunding site to help cover his legal expenses, as has Judd, though she’s brought in less money. Judd has said promises of funding never came to fruition because she was “small beans”.Crosby and Judd have not made any indication that they intend to stall certification again this year, and there has not been a local effort to install hand counts, though some in the county still want them. The primary election this year in Cochise didn’t see any disruptions.“They have been quieter recently as this court case has been playing out,” Bruner said. “You haven’t seen public statements from either of them suggesting that they would refuse to certify this time.”Judd is not running for re-election, but Crosby is. Democrats have seen more interest in their candidates for supervisor and recorder roles this year than in previous cycles, including from national groups that have given endorsements to boost their profiles. Theresa Walsh, a retired army colonel who is challenging Crosby in November, lists one policy statement on her website – election integrity.“Since the elections of 2020, many in our State and Cochise County have said that votes weren’t counted or weren’t correctly counted, that election results were tainted, changing the outcome of races,” her statement says. “As I learned as a pre-law student, you can’t just say it, you have to prove it. And that hasn’t happened. Because it didn’t happen. We have election integrity, we have systems we can trust.” More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris lands second Vogue cover: ‘The candidate for our times’

      by

      Kamala Harris has landed her second US Vogue cover on Friday with a photograph by Annie Leibovitz that reads: “The candidate for our times.”“Only rarely are individuals summoned for acts of national rescue, but in July, Vice President Kamala Harris received one of those calls,” the glossy magazine, which has previously endorsed the candidate, said on X. “With President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign, the world looked to Harris with hopes and doubts.”But the accompanying 8,000-word profile elicited little new about Harris’s policy positions if she is elected in November.“One of my first calls – outside of family – will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,” she told the magazine.“It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work in a way that benefits them?”On the widening war in the Middle East, Harris said that while she could not anticipate the future, she would focus on creating “‘incentives’ for de-escalation and a ‘pathway’ for stability” and spoke of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination”.“There’s been a language and a conversation around what’s been happening, particularly around Israel and Gaza, that suggests that this is binary. It’s not,” she said, adding: “You’re not either for this one or for that one.“A lot of the work that needs to be done,” Harris continued, “is a function of the circumstances at the moment. I can’t anticipate what the circumstances will be four months from now.”The publication spoke to the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was deeply involved in the effort to oust Biden from the ticket after the president’s disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump in June.Pelosi said: “We had wanted – we thought that there would be – an open convention” and Harris had recognized the conflicts within the Democratic party.“It was easy for people to come to her because they knew she didn’t have bad feelings toward them,” Pelosi explained. “And then she – boom! – one, two, three, wrapped it all up. It was a beautiful thing.”The cover photo is likely to stir up less drama than a previous Vogue portrait three years ago that provoked a backlash for what critics deemed a lack respect for the first person of Black and south Asian descent sworn in as vice-president after she was photographed in sneakers.“Vogue robbed Harris of her roses,” wrote the Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan. “A bit of awe would have served the magazine well in its cover decisions. Nothing about the cover said, ‘Wow.’ And sometimes, that’s all Black women want, an admiring and celebratory ‘wow’ over what they have accomplished.”Vogue later amended the online picture with a more flattering image.“Obviously we have heard and understood the reaction to the print cover,” the editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, told the New York Times, “and I just want to reiterate that it was absolutely not our intention to, in any way, diminish the importance of the vice-president-elect’s incredible victory.” More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Mark Milley fears being court-martialed if Trump wins, Woodward book says

      by

      Mark Milley, a retired US army general who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues”, the veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward writes in an upcoming book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”Woodward cites Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist now jailed for contempt of Congress, as saying of Milley: “We’re gonna hold him accountable.”Trump’s wish to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who criticized him in print has been reported before, including by Mark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shouted” about William McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, and Stanley McChrystal, the retired special forces general whose men killed another al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Iraq in 2006.Milley was able to persuade Trump to back down, Woodward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elected.Woodward also describes Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since his retirement last year, and quotes the former general as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.”Milley spoke to Woodward for his previous reporting. Woodward now reports the former general as saying: “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.“A fascist to the core.”Woodward, 81, made his name in the 1970s with Carl Bernstein during Watergate, the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Woodward’s new blockbuster, War, will be published on Tuesday. His fourth book at least in part about Trump – after Fear, Rage, and Peril – stoked uproar this week with the release of revelations including that Trump sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin early in the coronavirus pandemic, and that Trump has had as many as seven phone calls with the Russian president since leaving office.Milley was chair of the joint chiefs of staff from 2019 to 2023. His attempts to cope with Trump have been widely reported – particularly in relation to Trump’s demands for military action against protesters for racial justice in the summer of 2020 and, later that year, Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the election to Biden.Last year, marking his retirement, Milley appeared to take a direct swipe at Trump, then a candidate for a third successive Republican presidential nomination.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley told a military audience at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Since then, Trump has brushed aside Republican rivals to seize the nomination, campaigned against first Biden then Harris, and survived two assassination attempts. Less than a month from election day, he and Harris are locked in a tight race.In office, Trump memorably insisted senior military officers owed their loyalty to him, even reportedly telling his second chief of staff, the retired marine general John Kelly, US generals should “be like the German generals” who Trump insisted were “totally loyal” to Adolf Hitler during the second world war. Kelly mentioned military assassination plots against Hitler but Trump was not convinced.As told by Woodward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Washington Post and the New York Times – writing in the Post that “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil” – and comments McChrystal made on CNN, calling Trump “immoral” and “dishonest”.“As commander-in-chief” of US armed forces, Woodward writes, “Trump had extraordinary power over retired commissioned officers. It was within his authority to recall them to active duty and court-martial them. But it had only been done a few times in American history and for very serious crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [general] was charged in 2017 with six counts of raping a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”So Trump summoned Milley and Esper. The president demanded action but the two men told him not to seek to punish McRaven and McChrystal, because they had a right to voice their opinions and because it would backfire, drawing attention to their words.“The president didn’t want to hear it,” Woodward writes.So Milley switched tack.“‘Mr President,’ Milley said. ‘I’m the senior military officer responsible for the good order and discipline of general officers and I’ll take care of this.’“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You really will?’ he asked skeptically.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“‘Absolutely,’ Milley assured him.“‘OK, you take care of it,’ President Trump said.”Such dramatic Oval Office scenes are familiar from previous books by Woodward and legions of competing reporters and former Trump officials. According to Woodward’s new reporting, Milley did take action after fending Trump off, calling McRaven and McChrystal and warning them to “step off the public stage”.“‘Pull it back,’ Milley said. If Trump actually used his authority to recall them to duty, there was little Milley could do.”Woodward then quotes Milley speaking this year about his fear that Trump will seek to punish his military critics if he returns to power.McRaven, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Milley’s fear of retribution and whether he shared it.Trump has given such figures plenty of reason to worry. Among proliferating campaign-trail controversies, the former president has frequently voiced his desire for revenge on opponents and critics, including by using the FBI and Department of Justice to mount politically motivated investigations. At rallies, Trump has frequently told crowds: “I am your retribution.”The Utah senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was recently asked about possible consequences of his own opposition to Trump including votes to convict in both his impeachment trials.“I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word,” a “suddenly subdued” Romney told the Atlantic. “So I would take him at his word.”Woodward also reports Milley’s harrowing experiences since stepping down as chair of the joint chiefs.“Since retiring, Milley had received a non-stop barrage of death threats that he, at least in part, attributed to Trump’s repeated attempts to discredit him.“‘He is inciting people to violence with violent rhetoric,’ Milley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the power of suggestion, which is exactly what he did on 6 January” 2021, the day Trump incited supporters to attack Congress, in hope of overturning his election defeat.“As a former chairman, Milley was provided round-the-clock government security for two years. But he had taken additional precautions at significant personal expense, installing bullet-proof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home.” More