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In The Atlantic’s next cover story, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg profiled General Mark Milley, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last 16 months of Donald Trump’s presidency. What Milley saw as the nation’s highest-ranking officer is a graphic warning of the existential danger America will be in should Trump return to office.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The American face of authoritarian propaganda Airlines are just banks now. Millennials have lost their grip on fashion.

A Patriot and His Duty

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military position in the United States, designated by law as the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. It is a post of vital national importance, but most Americans probably have no idea who serves in it at any given time.

And yet, for almost two years, the safety of the United States and the sanctity of its Constitution may well have depended more than any American could have known on Mark Milley, a career Army officer who became the 20th chairman in late 2019. Milley’s experiences in the waning days of the Trump administration should appall and alarm every sensible American.

Milley served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the most fraught period of civil-military dysfunction in U.S. history. As The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writes in our next cover story, Milley faced an unprecedented situation in which the president—a man, Jeff notes, horrendously addled by “cognitive unfitness and moral derangement”—was himself the greatest threat to the Constitution.

If that sounds dramatic, consider what Milley’s senior colleagues—career military men who served in the Trump White House—told Jeff about the nightmare facing the chairman. “Mark Milley had to contain the impulses of people who wanted to use the United States military in very dangerous ways,” according to retired Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s second chief of staff. (Milley, for his part, was worried that Trump would try to overcome his electoral loss by creating a “Reichstag moment,” perhaps by sparking a foreign war or by using the military against civilians.)

Army Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, who served as one of Trump’s many hired-and-fired national security advisers, commented on the immensity of the challenge facing Milley by posing a terrifying hypothetical to Jeff: “As chairman, you swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but what if the commander in chief is undermining the Constitution?” (We might add to this an even more unsettling question: What if millions of Americans don’t seem to care?)

Even those who may think they’ve fully grasped Trump’s depravity will be shocked by some of the events that Jeff reports.

For example, at the ceremony welcoming him as the new chairman, Milley invited Captain Luis Avila to sing “God Bless America.” Avila had completed five combat tours, lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. Jeff writes:

After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.

“Milley’s family,” Jeff continues,“venerated the military, and Trump’s attitude toward the uniformed services seemed superficial, callous, and, at the deepest human level, repugnant.”

But Trump did respect some military personnel, especially Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL who was court-martialed on multiple charges and whose own comrades testified to his bloodthirsty and reckless behavior. (Gallagher was acquitted of all charges except for posing with a slain enemy’s corpse.) Trump intervened in the question of whether Gallagher, despite his acquittals, should keep his SEAL pin—a decision traditionally made by fellow SEALs.

Milley tried to stop Trump from interfering with this important tradition. Trump, according to Jeff, “called Gallagher a hero and said he didn’t understand why he was being punished.”

“Because he slit the throat of a wounded prisoner,” Milley said.

“The guy was going to die anyway,” Trump said.

It’s a war crime, Milley protested, to no avail. Trump refused to see what the “big deal” was all about. “You guys”—and here he meant combat soldiers—“are all just killers. What’s the difference?”

Gallagher got to keep his pin.

If Trump’s ideal military is one in which Eddie Gallagher is celebrated as a hero and Luis Avila is warehoused out of sight, what does that suggest about who might lead the military if Trump returns to office? Who would have the fortitude to turn back the unlawful orders of a vicious and cowardly commander in chief to kill prisoners, to act as a praetorian guard around the White House, or even to use nuclear arms?

When Trump lost the election, and especially after the January 6 insurrection, Milley was apparently growing concerned about Trump’s emotional stability. The chairman called all of America’s top nuclear officers to a meeting, in which he said, “If anything weird or crazy happens, just make sure we all know.” He then asked each officer to affirm that he understood the proper procedures for the release of nuclear weapons. He also called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that America was not in the kind of chaos that could lead to war.

Milley’s critics raged that the chairman was undermining the president’s authority, and, as Jeff notes, they wanted to see the general in leg-irons—or worse. These charges were partisan nonsense. What should be more concerning to every citizen of the United States is that Mark Milley, and many others around him, felt it was important to reassure the Chinese, and to keep the lines of communication around America’s nuclear command structure clear and open. In normal times, no one would think to do such things, but, as Jeff notes, Milley’s months serving under Trump “were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve.”

Reading Jeff’s article, I kept thinking of the 1965 novel Night of Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel (who also co-wrote Seven Days in May, about a military coup in the United States). It’s not a great book, but the premise is scary enough: A young American senator, after a long evening alone with the president at his famous retreat, realizes that the commander in chief has descended into madness and is brewing grandiose plans for conquest that will ignite World War III. In the light of day, the president seems like a reasonable man, so no one but the senator knows that he’s gone completely bonkers.

Milley faced the opposite and more difficult problem: Everyone knew Trump was unhinged. It wasn’t even remotely a secret. General James Mattis even told friends and colleagues that Trump was “more dangerous than anyone could imagine.” But again, nobody had to imagine it; anyone who was ever in the same room as Trump knew it. And yet, few acted to stop him. (Mike Pence’s one day of courage on January 6 is an honorable and important exception.) Many others did not do their duty—including the Republican members of the United States Congress, whose lives Trump endangered.

Milley, unlike so many in Washington, continued to honor his oath to the Constitution. The next time, we will not be so lucky. The next time, Trump will not make the same mistake twice: He will ensure that no one like Mark Milley will be in the National Security Council, or at the Pentagon— or guarding America’s nuclear forces at Strategic Command. The next time, when Trump’s narcissism and cruelty tell him that he must exact revenge on the country, perhaps even on the world, no one will be there to stop him.

Related:

Trump could still start a last-ditch war with Iran. (From 2020) Trump: Americans who died in war are “losers” and “suckers.” (From 2020)

Today’s News

The U.S. temporarily granted expanded access to work permits and deportation relief to about half a million Venezuelans who are already in the country.    House Republicans failed to advance an appropriations bill for the Defense Department in a setback for Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a potential government shutdown looms. Poland will stop providing weapons to Ukraine. The two countries continue to disagree about a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain imports.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: David McNew / Getty; Haldeman Papers.

Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather

By Joshua Benton

In Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, a mere page and a half is devoted to introducing Musk’s grandfather, a Canadian chiropractor named Joshua N. Haldeman. Isaacson describes him as a source of Musk’s great affection for danger—“a daredevil adventurer with strongly held opinions” and “quirky conservative populist views” who did rope tricks at rodeos and rode freight trains like a hobo. “He knew that real adventures involve risk,” Isaacson quotes Musk as having said. “Risk energized him.”

But in 1950, Haldeman’s “quirky” politics led him to make an unusual and dramatic choice: to leave Canada for South Africa … What would make a man undertake such a radical change? Isaacson writes that Haldeman had come “to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft.” One of Haldeman’s sons has written that it may have simply been “his adventurous spirit and the desire for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family.” But another factor was at play: his strong support for the brand-new apartheid regime.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

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Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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Zelenskyy's appearance comes during tense negotiations over US budget legislation, with Republicans seeking steep cuts.

In retrospect, Joe Biden probably wishes he’d never uttered these words in public. Maybe it was just youthful exuberance: He was, after all, only 77 at the time.

“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said at a rally in Detroit, one of his last pre-lockdown campaign appearances of the 2020 Democratic primaries. It was early March, and he was flanked by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a pair of his former rivals, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker—all members of what Biden would call “an entire generation of leaders” and “the future of this country.”

Few paid much attention to the future president’s remarks at the time. They appeared consistent with a prevailing assumption about his campaign: that Biden was running as an emergency-stopgap option. And once the emergency—Donald Trump—was dealt with, the old pro was expected to make way for that “entire generation.”

“I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said during an online fundraiser shortly after he gave his bridge speech, according to The New York Times.

Biden never explicitly said he would serve just one term, but multiple outlets reported that he and his advisers discussed making such a pledge. His allies reinforced the notion, even as Biden himself denied it. “It is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president,” Politico reported in December 2019, citing four unnamed sources who spoke regularly with Biden.

As it would turn out, the “bridge” declaration proved to be one of Biden’s most memorable utterances of the past four years. The line has been quoted a great deal, especially lately—or hurled at him, usually by someone pointing out that this bridge seems to be stretching on much longer than anyone expected.

Americans are plainly impatient for Biden to retire already, a point hammered home by the preponderance of poll respondents—including Democrats and independents—who say Biden should not be seeking a second term that would begin after his 82nd birthday. Elected Democrats, operatives, and donors keep saying the same in private, while an array of op-ed and cable kibitzers have exhaled a steady barrage on this subject. (The Atlantic has also explored this topic.)

[Read: Why Biden shouldn’t run in 2024]

But put aside the usual questions about Biden’s age and fitness to endure another campaign or term. What’s often overlooked in these discussions is the depth of frustration behind this public skittishness. It goes beyond the hand-wringing about possible health catastrophes that could befall the president at the worst possible time (i.e., next October). The displeasure over Biden’s determination to keep going suggests that voters might perceive him as acting selfishly, or that they feel misled by a candidate who ran for president on the pretense of a short-term fix, only to remain ensconced as a long-term proposition.

When Biden ran in 2020, several friends and aides reportedly advised him to come out and say he would serve just one term, because that was understood to be his intent anyway. But he was loath to announce himself as a lame duck earlier than he had to. This was consistent with a Biden decree, dating at least to his days as vice president, when people asked whether he would consider running to succeed Obama. “Nobody in D.C. gains influence by declaring they are playing out the string,” Politico’s Glenn Thrush wrote in a profile of Biden, headlined “Joe Biden in Winter.” That was in 2014.

In politics, Biden would tell people around him, you are either on your way up or on your way down—and there is no reason for a leader of any age to ever deny interest in moving up unless they want to declare themselves irrelevant to the future.

Even so, the 2020 election was less about the future than it was about surviving a ghastly present. Biden came back to do a specific job. “I think it’s really, really important that Donald Trump not be re-elected,” Biden told me during the 2020 campaign, when I asked him why on Earth he was putting himself through another race at his age. “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative,” he was always saying.

Biden and his aides didn’t shy from the label of “transition candidate” and typically were noncommittal on the prospect of a second term—right up until Biden transitioned himself into the White House and became much more definitive. “The answer is yes,” Biden said at a news conference in March 2021, the first time he was asked as president whether he would run again in 2024. “My plan is to run for reelection,” he continued. “That’s my expectation.”

In fact, pollsters and focus-group facilitators report that many of their subjects still haven’t fully accepted that Biden decided to run again. “It seems pretty implicit in the way voters talk that they didn’t expect him to be a two-term president,” Sarah Longwell, the Bulwark publisher who has interviewed panels across the political spectrum, told me.

“To insiders, a Trump-Biden rematch is a foregone conclusion,” Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, told me. But in his own focus groups—mainly of young and Latino voters—Tulchin said voters are not fully buying that, whether out of denial or distaste. “They don’t like being forced to make a choice that they don’t want to make yet,” he said.

Biden has enjoyed perhaps the most triumphant last hurrah in American political history. Also, the longest. Start the clock in August 2008, when Barack Obama first selected him as his running mate. “I want you to view this as the capstone of your career,” Obama told Biden when he offered him the job, according to the eventual vice president. “And not the tombstone,” Biden joked in reply.

Fifteen years later, he might suffer from a general intolerance that voters reserve for high-level government officials who grow old in office. The various freeze-ups and infirmities of Senators Mitch McConnell (81) and Dianne Feinstein (90), respectively, have drawn more sneers than sympathy. The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has come in for a great deal of posthumous scorn, even among her staunchest liberal admirers, for holding on long enough for her health to deteriorate and a Republican president (Trump) to appoint her successor.

By appearances, Biden is in much better health than the examples cited above (especially Ginsburg, who died three years ago). But that does nothing to change the actuarial tables, or Biden’s unpopularity, or Vice President Kamala Harris’s. Nor does it stop anyone from trotting out Biden’s bridge quote and its corollaries from four years ago. The reminders carry a strong suggestion that the terms of the original “deal” have shifted, and that this is much more of Biden than anyone bargained for.

“He has been a solid ‘transitional’ president, but transition requires transit, or a second act,” the journalist Joe Klein observed last week in a Substack column. National Review’s Jim Geraghty recently compared Biden to a relay runner who decides to “keep the baton to himself and attempt another circuit around the track, even though he’s slowing down.”

[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Fairness demands a few qualifiers and caveats here. Again, Biden never said he would serve just one term. The president has every right to run again, and any serious Democrat is free to primary him. There are solid arguments that Biden still has the best chance of any Democrat to beat Trump, given the power of his incumbency, the possible fractiousness of an open primary, and the uncertainty of whoever an alternative Democratic nominee would be.

But perhaps Biden’s best reason for running again in 2024, or defense against suggestions of a bait and switch, is this: He probably did not expect Trump to still be here. Nor did many of the rest of us. There is no precedent for a defeated one-term president to so easily resume his status as de facto standard-bearer of his party. After the January 6 insurrection, Republicans sounded more than ready to move on. This bipartisan exhale was made possible by Biden—God love ya, Joey! Beating Trump should have been the ultimate “capstone” of his career. Yet three years later, Trump is still here. And so is Biden.

“Politicians who know Biden well say that if he were convinced that Trump were truly vanquished, he would feel he had accomplished his political mission,” the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in one of the most widely discussed recent entries to the “Please go away, Joe” cannon. In other words, meet the new justification, same as the last one. It’s probably as strong a rationale as any for Biden to attempt this.

Except that it’s getting old, and so’s the bridge.

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