General Mark Milley had one particularly bad moment in his run as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which ends this month. “During the George Floyd protests in early June 2020, Milley, wearing combat fatigues, followed Trump out of the White House to Lafayette Square, which had just been cleared of demonstrators by force.” A week later he apologized. “His apology earned him the permanent enmity of Trump, who told him that apologies are a sign of weakness.” That was hardly the most ridiculous or most dangerous Trump-related obstacle Milley had to deal with during his tenure. Like I’ve said in the past, these days, I’m a single issue voter. That issue is democracy. And Mark Milley helped protect it from Donald Trump. “In normal times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the president, is supposed to focus his attention on America’s national-security challenges, and on the readiness and lethality of its armed forces. But the first 16 months of Milley’s term, a period that ended when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve … Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office.” Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic: The Patriot. In one (more) telling tale about the terrible person Milley was dealing with, Goldberg describes the scene during Milley’s welcome ceremony, when the General invited “a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing God Bless America. 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.” (This is the guy Milley was tasked with protecting us from. It’s also the guy whose run for a second term has been fully embraced by one of America’s two political parties.)

+ “The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gen. CQ Brown as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, putting him in place to succeed Gen. Mark Milley when he retires at the end of the month. Brown’s confirmation on a 83-11 vote, months after President Joe Biden nominated him for the post, comes as Democrats try to maneuver around holds placed on hundreds of nominations by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville over the Pentagon’s abortion policy.”