Thread by @RadioFreeTom

Here's what I think - so far - about the Milley business.
- Calls for him to resign are stupid.
- Calls to fire him are stupid.
- The call to China was a *good* thing
- It's a legit question about whether he was preemptively countermanding possible orders from the CINC.

/1

Bad-faith calls from craven opportunists like Rubio mean nothing. And no CJCS has ever had to deal with a mentally ill president who was actively trying to overthrow the constitutional order. But before we cheer any of this, let's remember that everything becomes precedent.
/2

Milley, I think, was trying to steady the ship in case Trump called in some more junior guy and said "Get me Xi on the phone and bring the football." But you don't want it to become a thing where CJCS can say "ignore POTUS orders unless you clear with me." That's dangerous. /3

But if you have an unhinged President and a mob that has just attacked the Capitol, you also cannot say "all the laws must go unexecuted but one." Seems to me that Milley found a middle ground here of saying "procedure" that would give breathing space to other officers. /4

And none of this, not one moment of it, would have happened were it not for the fact that Donald Trump was a mentally unstable sociopath who was backed by a party whose leaders, as George Will notes, hate their own voters and are terrified of them.
/5x