you saw lloyd on the other hand, the civilian political appointee, say, well, i don t discuss my conversations with the president, which is what he s supposed to say. it s called executive privilege. the generals are like, no, i told him this. peggy, there s a part of this we should all view as very healthy, that we can see there s disagreement, civilian control, all of that stuff. the president made this decision. i m surprised he didn t, in hindsight, own it more there. the president looked dodgy. he looked dodgy in the original interview when he said essentially, no, nobody told me otherwise. then he looked bad the other day with general milley. i think probably he should have simply owned it and said, look, i was warned this might be really hard. i decided we re going to go ahead anyway. short, though, i think the generals right now, after 20 years of war, after seeing it and whatever they ve been through, they are really media savvy.
commitment he made to civilian control of the military, right? like everybody else, when the book came out, questions arose whether milley was free-lancing or not. the military can t free-lance from civilian control. he made clear what he said was consistent with the commander in chief s point of view, and that s good, particularly if as he said there was some concern on the part of the chinese that instabily was leading to the possibility of an attack on china. and it is surprise to go hear about instability, everybody running around to deal with it. i want to turno your thoughts, your strategic framework for looking at and how we should look at what happens this week in terms of myriad of crises, with republicans not at the table helping to govern. yeah. nicolle, it is helpful to separate what s really important in the long run from sadly what s dominating the news. what s dominating the news is how fast will the democrats get
he was involved. did milley overstep his authority in that moment? well, don, first we have to wait for the book to be published so that everyone can read it including myself. i ve known bob woodward for a very long time, since watergate days, and i know he is very factual in his approach to getting information and gather in fashions most journalists can t comprehend but he s very, very thorough. but i still want to wait to see exactly what happened. i think it s really important that everyone, the american people, and the world understand that we live under civilian control, that the military is under civilian control. so it s important that the american people be satisfied that general milley acted appropriately, and we never want to send a signal to our allies abroad who have democracies to make sure we send them a signal that the military operates under the aegis and authority of the president of the united states in civilian control.