US Army Gen. 'secretly' called China over fears Trump might launch nuclear war: New Book

United States military officials took unforeseen measures to prevent Donald Trump from “going rogue,” excerpts released from Watergate veteran Bob Woodward’s new book revealed on Tuesday, adding that the former US commander-in-Chief had “almost” started a nuclear war or an attack on China. Woodward’s third Trump book Peril which is due to be published on 29 September, also shockingly reveals that America’s top military officer General Mark Milley had to make “secret calls” to People Liberation Army in China, assuring, that the United States had “no intention” of starting a war in the region. 

According to the excerpts published from the forthcoming book by American broadcasters, including The Post, and CNN, Gen.Milley was extremely worried that the ex-President of the United States, Trump might strike Beijing and launch an armed conflict in Southeast Asia. Therefore, he had to resort to making tough calls such as ringing his Chinese counterpart Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army to ensure that the United States would not strike.

“If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time," US Army Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was quoted as saying in the book co-worked with Robert Costa. 

'Trump had gone into a serious mental decline', says Milley

In the aftermath of the US Capitol on 6 January, and subsequently losing the elections to Joe Biden, ex-President Donald Trump hurtled unsubstantiated claims of 'election fraud' and launched ‘stop the steal’ campaign. Around that time, General Milley was reported as assuming that it was “certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline”. He then added, ”We are 100 per cent steady. Everything's fine,” in the excerpts published Tuesday.

His remarks came after reports emerged in January that the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Army Gen. Mark Milley during a phone call that then-President Donald Trump was a “dictator” who “should have been arrested on the spot” for inciting the Capitol riots, the account also revealed in detail in the book Peril. These were, as per Woodward, the “safeguard measures” Milley had put in place to ensure that Trump did not start a nuclear war. Pelosi also told Milley that “the Republicans have blood on their hands” and that it is a “sad state of affairs for our country [America] that we’ve been taken over by a dictator who used force against another branch of government,” the book further elaborates.

“He’s still sitting there. He [Trump] should have been arrested on spot,” she reportedly told Army General, accusing the ex-President of coup d’etat.

Pelosi had also asked the then-Vice President Mike Pence to trigger the American constitution’s 25th Amendment against Donald Trump, accusing the former US leader of planning and coordinating the insurrection with his provocative speech made to the right-wing crowd at a rally outside the White House that also included alt-right groups such as ‘Proud Boys’. Milley, meanwhile, told aides that America  could have “Reichstag moment,” as Trump was “preaching the gospel of the Führer" [Nazi Rise to Power reference]. This conversation was also explained in Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s book I Alone Can Fix This. Trump had also told his chief of staff, John Kelly, “Hitler did a lot of good things” as per the book.