America's enemies are making propaganda value of former President Donald Trump's idiotic suggestion that Gen. Mark Milley deserves to die for his communications with China. Milley left office as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Friday, but this week, he told CBS that he had taken appropriate measures for his family's security.
At contention is Trump's attack on Milley in a social media post last week. The former commander in chief declared that the nation's top military officer had committed a "treasonous act" for which, "in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!" Trump's complaint centers on two calls Milley made to his Chinese counterpart assuring him that the United States had no plans to attack China and that the U.S. political system remained stable in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Those calls were authorized by the Pentagon's civilian leadership and commensurate with Milley's responsibilities as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
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To be clear, Trump's attacks on Milley are totally ridiculous. They evince the former president's psychological inability to put the national interest before his own interests.
That said, Milley's cultivation of the media damaged his reputation as an apolitical military officer. The perception of being apolitical is a critical concern for any military officer, but none more so than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Yes, Milley faced a significant challenge in managing Trump's unpredictability alongside the avoidance of military miscalculation. But Milley's job didn't require him to help authors write books and journalists write stories. Milley's successor, Gen. Charles Brown, has the credentials and character to thrive as chairman. But Milley's public relations games have made Brown's job harder.
Nevertheless, Trump's "DEATH!" sentence idiocy only helps America's enemies. And they're taking advantage of it.
Iran's Fars News Agency claimed that Milley's comments to CBS prove that "Trump's threat scared" him. Fars operates at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — something that deserves note, considering that the IRGC is actively plotting to assassinate former U.S. officials and military officers. Trump's rhetoric has also been met with bemused coverage in Chinese state media. For Beijing, Trump's hyperbole offers a useful means of delegitimizing the U.S. political system in favor of the Communist Party's purported provision of a unified, patriotic order. Similar is the report from Russian state media outlet TASS, which uses the incident to call U.S. civil-military relations into question.
Put simply, Trump's rhetoric has achieved the exact same result as that which he accused Milley of doing: helping America's enemies.