Up and condemn threats to democracy. A very revealing split screen today, with President Biden standing up for democracy, while republicans held a Three Ring Circus of a hearing, struggling to find a rationale, any rationale, to impeach joe biden. But their own witnesses say there is no there there. I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud, or any wrongdoing. In my opinion, more information needs to be gathered and assessed before i could make such an assessment. In fact, i do not believe the Current Evidence would support articles of impeachment. And we begin tonight with President Biden addressing the nation today, on one of the greatest threat our country faces, ahead of next years election. The threat to democracy. The blunt warning from the president could not come at a more fitting moment. As today is also the last day on the job for the man who, in 2020, stood directly between donald trump and a coup. Joint chiefs of staff general mark milley. You will remember it was milley who talks trump out of using the Insurrection Act on civilians during the 2020 protests following the killing of george floyd, pushing back against trump when he reportedly told officials to crack the skulls or just shoot those protesters. Trump then used milley as a prop for his Entourage Walk for a followup to Episcopal Church in washington, which upheld a bible upside down after protesters were forcibly cleared from lafayette square. Milley, to his credit, peeled off before the group that also included attorney general bill barr, trumps hatchet man, got to the church. He later apologized to numbers of the military, infuriating trump. But perhaps General Milleys most notable accomplishments took place in the period between the 2020 election and bidens inauguration, where he fought seemingly daily battles to protect our democracy from Donald Trumps determination to destroy it. Milley vowed during those months that there would be no coup on his watch, reported telling some of his closest deputies, they may try, but they are not going to succeed. He was the Speaker Nancy Pelosi called after the january 6th insurrection, asking if the Nations Nuclear weapons were secure, to which milley reportedly replied i want you to know this in your heart of hearts. I can guarantee you, 110 , that the military, use of our military power, whether it is nuclear for a strike in a foreign country of any kind, we are not going to do anything illegal or crazy. General milley did everything in his power to defend the constitution, as to prevent the military from being deployed against the American People, right up until the moment joe biden was sworn in. This makes it completely unsurprising that he is the target of trumps bitterness and rage, to the point where the former president suggested in writing on his Social Media Platform that milley should be executed, something President Biden directly addressed in his speech today. Here is what you hear from maga extremists about the retiring patriot general honoring his oath to the constitution. He is a traitor and a fraud. In times gone by, the punishment would have been death. This is the United States of america. This is the United States of america. And although i do not believe even a majority of republicans think that, the silence is deafening. The silence is deafening. President biden did not stop there. He went on to us forcefully speak out against maga republicans, and all the threat they pose to democratic institutions. Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not the rule of money, not rule of the mighty pay regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections. It means accepting the out, win or lose. It means you cannot love your country only when you win. There is no question that Todays Republican Party is driven and intimidated by maga republican extremists. Their extreme agenda if carried out would fundamentally alter the institutions of american democracy as we know it. Maga extremists across the country have made clear where they stand. So the challenge for the rest of america, the majority of americans, is to make clear where we stand. It is a stark reminder that next years election is about more than just democrat versus republican, it is about whether or not we as a nation remain a democracy. Because, if trump winds a second term, there might not be another general mark milley there to stop him. With the now is an apple, staff writer for the atlantic, and elaine cooper, pentagon correspondent for the new york times. Thank you for being here. Helene, i want to start with you, you wrote an excellent piece that lays out this terrifying timeline of General Milley s tenure as a member of the joint chief of staff, under donald, all the way from hearing about the George Floyd Incident to him having to essentially stand between this country and a coup. Your assessment on this, his last day at work . We know we have a civilian controlled military, which is great, unless the civilian in control is an autocrat who wants to use the military against the American People. We came very close to having that, but thank god mark milley was there. I would love to hear your assessment on this, his last day, and on what President Biden had to say about the threat to democracy. Thanks for having me, joy. I totally forgot that trump held that bible upside down until you play that just now. It has been a wild ride for mark milley. I have forgotten so much of what happened as i was working on this story over the past three weeks. Each time i thought i was done, i would remember Something Else, or go back and Something Else would crop up. But that period you are referring to, between election and january 20th of 2020, i would actually start it a little earlier. I think, for milley, the break with trump came when he apologized for that walk across lafayette park. Trump was very angry at that point, and demanded to know why he had apologized. He thought he saw that as a moment of weakness. And General Milley , after that, spent a lot of time trying to make sure that trump and the people around him did not end up doing a wag the dog type scenario, or leading the United States into any unnecessary war or strikes. There was a moment i recounted in my story, where mark asper, former Defense Secretary, right about and his book, where mark really came up to him in Colorado Springs at a ceremony and said he had just received a call from benNational Security advisor robert obrien, wanting to strike another general in iran. There was no vetting of that, nothing like that. They thought, at the time, that this was trump trying to use this for political gain. Because the elections were coming up. So he did not just start on election day, but right after election day, after trump lost, he had not conceded yet, and one of the first things he did was to decide to shake up the pentagon, he fired mark asper, the Defense Secretary, who he could not stand at the time, he brought in a lot of loyalists, including a new acting Defense Secretary, who nobody had ever heard of. There was a lot of concern, then, a lot of talk about using mike flynn, this other trump acolyte and former National Security adviser, wanted to use the military to stage coup. There was a lot of talk about that. And this was a really perilous time. We forget about that period, because january 6th sucked up all the oxygen. But in the days before january 6, there was just so much going on, as trump, at the time, continued to try to look for every which way he could to stay in power. So there was a lot of lori that i felt like i had a little bit of ptsd about, working the story. As did many of us, as did we all. The ways in which one could describe the United States in the last several years are the ways that we would think of to describe other countries, not our own, right . I mean, the fact we almost had a military coup, but for mark milley and his ilk, who refused to allow the military to be that way for the fact donald trump wanted to use the military to shoot protesters so he would look strong. The fact he tried to emulate Vladimir Putin in so many ways, and the fact we actually had an armed attack on our own capitol by american citizens. I just wonder how you look at this, what lens you are looking at it through. You study autocracies, and we are fairly close to slipping into one, we could still. I think two things are important to say. One is that the United States is actually much more of an outlier among other democracies than we think. We are in many ways much farther, as you say, down the road toward autocracy in a lot of different ways. If you look at american democracy at the state level, there are a lot of states where one side or the other has gerrymandered the Voting District in such a way that the other side cannot win. We also have now, as the president said today, we have one of our Major Political parties which now uses the language of autocrats. It talks about traders, it talks about crushing enemies, it talks about threatening violence. It intimidates people. We know that there are republicans in congress who are afraid to say things in public because of what could happen when they go home, they might threaten my wife. That is now a real part of American Politics that was not there before. The second thing to say about your story tonight is that one of the things that has protected the United States is milley and people like him, people who see that they owe a neutral duty to the constitution. So, they are in power, but not in power to serve a particular president , but to serve a bigger idea. That would be people in the military, people in the civil services, people at the fbi, the range of people who feel they have that obligation. We have got used to the idea that there are such people in america, but there are a lot of countries where they do not exist, where Civil Servants are appointed because they are somebodys cousin, or the police are loyal to the person in power, not to the law. We are really at risk of losing that group of people, that tradition of neutrality in our country. Present biden today said, imagine the chancellor of germany asking, mr. President , what do you think if you pick up a paper tomorrow that said 1000 people broke down the doors of parliament, marched and killed two bodies in orbit over the election, what would you think . We cannot imagine that now. Also to your point, there are the kind of leaders who are intellectually curious, which are the kind of people that donald trump is going to drive from government if he comes back. He wants no one with intellectual curiosity, just submission. I want to play you what i thought was one of mark milleys finest hours, when it is abutted to the House Armed Services committee about what the fbi has acknowledged is the biggest threat to National Security. Here he is. I want to understand why grades. I am white, and i want to understand it. What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the constitution of the United States of america . What caused that . I want to find out. I have read mao zedong, i have read karl marx, i have read lennon, that doesnt make me a communist. What is wrong with understanding . Having some situational understanding about the country which we are here to defend . The next generation of leaders in the u. S. Military, if they are dealing with a donald trump as president again, then what . Such a good question. I think, but i do not know for sure, that the military is supposed to be apolitical. But donald trump went a long way to politicize the military. In the end, he was not able to do it, because the General Milley stood up to him. Some of his Defense Secretary stood up to him. But you know, he went through several of them. He came close. He wanted to fire General Milley, but was worried the entire Joint Chiefs Of Staff would resign. So, who does he appoint next . We have a new chairman coming up behind General Milley , is going to be charles cq brown, an africanamerican fighter pilot. He is going to be the next chairman, and he will be the chairman for joe biden and for whoever winds in 2024. So, what happens then . It puts an enormous amount of stress on what is supposed to be an apolitical military, when you are pulling them in that direction. We should all remember that this is an allvolunteer force. So, we risk breaking the military when you start putting them in these sorts of situations. I think we were in arizona, listening to President Biden when he was in arizona. It seems 1 million years ago when john mccain, who had his own issues and flirted with extremism with sarah palin and the whole nine, defended barack obama against one of his own supporters, saying he was a muslim and a terrorist, and he is neither. He gave an actual Concession Speech at what had to have been the worst moment of his life, a war hero who lost an election to a new politician, but he did give the Concession Speech. We cannot count on that anymore that there will be a Concession Speech, when an american president loses an election. Yeah. Trump broke a very long tradition. And that is connected to what we were just talking about before, this idea that there is something higher. Biden referred to it repeatedly today, he kept saying i was able to fight with john mccain, i could argue with john mccain, and after, we could go to lunch together and stay friends. What he meant by that was, we can have differences over policy, but ultimately, we agree that we abide by the rules of the constitution, and we are members of the same political system. What we now have in the United States that we had not had for many years is, as biden rightly said, a dominant part of the Publican Party that does not think that way. They are unwilling to abide by the rules, and they will not make Concession Speeches, because they do not respect the system or the rule of law, and they do not feel part of it anymore. That is the actual danger. It is not republicans versus democrats, it is the people who want to stay within the bounds of the constitution, and those who want to break it. I think biden is absolutely right to point to that problem, and to remind people that partisanship is an important part of the sorry, nonpartisanship, bipartisanship is an important part of the american tradition. It seems that 1 million years ago that was normal politics. It is frightening stuff, but as we say on this show, scaring his caring. And appelbaum, thank you both very much. Next on the reidout, it is no coincidence that President Biden chose arizona, the home of electiondenying officials and a hotbed of far right fanaticism, for his speech on democracy today. The reidout returns. cheery music they get it. They know how it works. And more importantly. It works for them. I dont have any anxiety about money anymore. I dont have to worry about a Mortgage Payment every month. It allowed me to live in my home. And not have to pay payments. [narrator] if youre 62 or older and own your home, you could access your equity to improve your lifestyle. A reverse Mortgage Loan eliminates your monthly Mortgage Payments and puts taxfree cash in your pocket. Call the number on your screen. It was the best thing ive ever done, and really . 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