Is it treason, or is it him saying he will commit a treasonous act in the hypothetical scenario that we intend to attack China? Is it black-and-white that the latter is itself treason?
II don't think it is insubordination either. Is it really insubordination for him to give the Chinese assurances that the US is stable and they shouldn't be worried about a politically-motivated military attack? Saying he will secretly warn the Chinese if the US is about to attack them, you could say that the warning would be insubordination or treason, but discussing what might happen in a hypothetical scenario does not seem, to me, to be either. Especially when the intent is clearly to prevent China from attacking the US first.
what if Gen Milley coordinated with the capitol storm troopers that's clear treason right there right?
none of us were there and we have to rely on second-hand accounts. hard to know what to call it. But if the good general has a MacArthur complex, that's probably not a good thing. I take it that's what Vindman is hinting at
For a case like this, I don't really trust the scope of information we can get from newspapers and books. Hopefully if there was an actual case to bring, the Admin would bring it regardless of the politics. But it looks more like it was puffed up, first to sell a book and then to score political points on the reaction. If you'll recall, parts of this story already hit the news cycle when it happened in January because Pelosi told the country that she talked to Gen Milley about the potential for Trump to start a war to try to avoid stepping down and had got assurances from him that he wouldn't let that happen. Trump was still president then and knew about this conversation. If there was some genuine treason going on, Trump could have fired Milley and/or could have had him charged him with treason or insubordination, could have at least called him to the Oval Office to account for himself. But he did none of those things while president. And now he talks like this is the first he's hearing about it, even though it was in the newspaper when it happened. That suggests to me that the outrage is fake and he just wants to create a scandal for Biden where none exists.
It's not treason given it didn't happen. I don't see how it is NOT treason if there was an imminent surprise attack ordered by Trump and he informed China beforehand. But I guess a few scenarios where it is questionable... 1- Sorry, Trump is nut and he's attacking. But I promise you it's not a nuke attack. If the general fears that China would mistake the attack as nuclear, we are all fk and he must do this to avoid calamity. 2- The attack is illegal (not informing Congress and the attack is for political nature not for US interest) and he didn't have the power to stop the attack. In this case, he might be telling China, it's illegal, get your folks out of XYZ and we'll work on stopping the attack here ASAP. Now, it's also possible that the reporting isn't accurate. What if the general was telling his China counterpart, I promise you there is no attack. I'm so sure of this that I will even tell you if there is one (as persuasion but as a lie at the same time). AGAIN, none of this is even a possibility if we have a President that is sane or is not seen as insane to the rest of the world.
I agree with you on puffs, but on Trump part, I don't think he is thinking oh cool, scandal time. He's legitimately pissed because he thinks his image and reputation are getting damaged. Sometime the response tells you exactly the type of person we are dealing with. Spoiler: Warning: toddler level statement
It's been a little while since I've had to read Trump's New Presidential language and I'm shocked all over again at how terrible his prose is. I imagine school children studying the his presidency 100 years from now and thinking that's just how people used to write in the old days.
Or maybe this is how future generations will write, and they'll be awed about how ahead of his time he was.
But school children will speak in idiocracy language by then, and Trump will be remembered as the great liberator of American talking.
As to your spoiler, Trump probably realized how stupid it was of him to sit down with Woodward for the second book. Trump is so narcissistic, that he believed he could control the narrative. Woodward had recordings of Trump saying stupid stuff and Trump wasn't able to deny the things Woodward wrote. So, now Trump is in attack mode to appease his base.
