joint chiefs. and the book also says milley called a secret meeting at the pentagon to review the process for military action including launching nuclear weapons that milley instructed top officials not to take orders from anyone including then president trump unless milley was involved. the writers write milley was certain that trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election with trump all but manic screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies. that doesn t cut it with marco rubio. it is the essence a military c coup. at a minimum he should be fired if this is true. it is completely appropriate for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff as the senior military adviser to both the secretary and the president to want to see those protocols
what responsibilities would he then have to safeguard national security, talking about the general at that point? yeah, you know, jim, i m going to do an anecdote here too as well because i worked for a guy in combat that we all all the troops thought he was under serious decline. he was a commander. what you do in those situations, you certainly can t pull the guy out of position. you might talk to his superiors. what you do in the meantime is you set up guardrails around him. you reinforce the standards. you do the kinds of things that will prevent that commander from doing something that is unusual or which is contrary to the mission that you re trying to execute. and i think on a larger strategic scale, that s exactly what general milley and others like gina haspel and others were trying to do knowing the demise and seeing the demise of then former president trump. yeah. i mean, it certainly was just a
president? didn t happen. he also says, allegedly, that we don t know what the president s trigger is. the president told us that when he came into office. he said let s not signal to adversaries what we re going to do. so, look at the environment the author sets up. that s a lot of drama. look at what the general does. there s not a lot of drama there. let s look at facts, not drama, and tell marco rubio, take a chill pill until you ask the general what he said. this is just too much, jim. jamie, what do you think? i m going to push back on phil. we re dear friends a little. i don t think i have read the whole book i don t think anyone is trying to overpromote the book. and as far as drama is concerned, i don t think it got any more dramatic than what happened on january 6th. general hertling, the authors also report that general milley believed former president trump was in serious mental decline.
essentially to stay tuned that he is planning on looking ahead so this could be a rematch in 2022, jim? kyung lah, thank you. larry elder the entertainer and broadcaster to the end. thank you so much. good to see you. thanks for watching. i m jim acosta. erin burnett outfront starts right now. outfront next, breaking news, cnn learning the nation s top general mark milley was not the only trump official to back channel china to reassure the country in the final months of the presidency this is the white house s defense as milley is kicking into high gear tonight. temporary fencing around the capitol going up in the next hour. this is ahead of saturday s rally which is in honor of the january 6th insurrectionist. who is behind this rally? our reporter spoke with the trump loyalest. and a republican quits the gop over the party s objections
iran. she said it another time, quote, we re on the way to a right wing coup. the whole thing is insanity. he s acting like a six year old with a tantrum. even then secretary of state mike pompeo, who is considered a loyalist, said after the election that trump was, quote, in a very dark place. no question. i remember from talking to my sources at the time that, you know, we had sources telling us that he was out of his mind. right. at the time. general hertling, let me turn to you next. president biden has said he has great confidence in the joint chiefs chairman general milley. do you see any red flags with how milley handled all this? i don t, jim, not at all. i suggest his contact with these foreign general officers like general li of the chinese liberation army, it s the biggest part of his job. and it was likely necessitated by intelligence reports assessed by staff saying something is going on in china. and as we learned from jamie s