Careful What You Wish For

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The most recently former president of the United States just painted a target on the rather broad chest of his own appointee chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Four-Star General Mark Milley needs a broad chest to display the thirty-three military awards (including four bronze stars) he’s earned.

Donald Trump, whose only military honor is the Order of the Bone Spur, was peeved because General Milley inexplicably chose loyalty to the United States Constitution over loyalty to the man who tried to burn it down.

When the still-President Trump staged an attempted coup against his own government on 6 January 2021 Milley, with the authorization of other presumably traitorous Trump administration officials, called China to assure those folks that sane minds still held checks on power in the United States (me, I’m not so sure) and nobody’s fingers would be anywhere near any nuclear buttons large or small.

A few days ago, Trump sounded the dog whistle to his followers (many of whom are nowhere near sane), writing that Milley’s was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” That was Trump spelling “death” out in all caps in case anyone had started to nod off at the end of his sentence.

Somebody might remind Trump — maybe using his own dog whistle — that those times have not gone by, that many believe that an attempted coup against a duly elected president is itself treason, and that the penalty for treason in this country today is still death.