leadership. in a new book, bob woodward and robert costa feared trump was in mental decline. he had two phone calls before the november election and just after the january 6th insurrection to reassure him. i want to assure you that the american government is stable and everything is going to be okay milley told general lee on october 30th. we are not going to attack or conduct any operations against you. on the same call, milley added general lee, you and i have known each other for now five years. if we re going to attack, i m going to call you ahead of time. it s not going to be a surprise. senator marco rubio quickly called for milley to be fired. this is treacherous. it s dangerous. it s unconstitutional and general milley needs to answer questions about it. he should be fired and have to face military justice for what he s done. a spokesman for milley said the general regularly communicates with chiefs of defense across the world including with china and russia all calls fro
book. he s saying i did not know about what happened on the call when i was defense secretary. does this change anything for you? not really. obviously, the f call was done pursuant to the approval of secretary esper and i think that certainly makes that clear as to what general milley was doing. on the second call, it was obvious at that point that the president was appointing political people to key positions at the defense department and it was coming at a time when there was a tremendous amount of concern about the role of the military as you ll recall every secretary of defense signed a letter that indicated that it was very important that the military not be used for political purposes
milley s golfs to make sure there was a peaceful handover to joe biden. milley was reportedly afraid trump could launch a nuclear attack in the final days so according to woodward and costa, he gathered top officers and said if they got an order to launch, they had to check with him. no matter what you are told, you do the procedure, you do the process, milley said and i m part of that procedure. the pentagon press secretary declined, refused to comment on anything that came out in this book, but he did talk about the fact that it would be what he called not at all uncommon and completely appropriate for chairman milley to want to review safety protocols like those around a nuclear launch. erin, john kirby, the press secretary echoing what we heard from the white house saying chairman milley has the complete confidence and support of lloyd austin. you know, speaking of that, i know it s common right in this out reach to the chinese as an
he s my guest. let s go outfront . good evening. i m erin burnett. the breaking news, general milley wasn t alone. as calls grow from mark milley to resign over revelations he contacted a top chinese general twice in the final months of donald trump s presidency to reassure beijing the u.s. would not attack china, we re learning mark esper also took extraordinary steps at the same time. a former senior defense official says that the chinese were so concerned about the rhetoric coming out of trump s white house last year that esper, the defense secretary had a top deputy, not milley, a top deputy back channel beijing telling them they were in no danger of being attacked. that is the exact same thing milley said and we ve learned today that milley conducted his call to the top chinese general in consultation with and with the approval of secretary esper.
bow williams. mark ed enter ordered a top policy advisor to send a back channel message to beijing to reassure them. that message and order before the october 30th call that milley made to his counterpart and that, the point of this was according to this top former official a two-step process to avoid any unnecessary confrontation that could lead to con conflict. erin, you may remember esper was fired but milley continued his out reach with the chinese. the white house today standing by the country s top general amid accusations he had gone too far at the end of donald trump s presidency in conversations with his counterpart in china and american adversary. the president knows general milley. he has been chairman of the joint chiefs for almost eight months of his presidency. they have worked side by side through a range of international events and the president has complete confidence in his