Trump Had ‘Shouting Match’ With Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Over Military Crackdown on Protesters
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly refused to deploy the regular military to push back George Floyd protesters.

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty
America’s highest ranking soldier, General Mark Milley, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raised his voice when President Donald Trump demanded the regular military be deployed against George Floyd protesters, according to the New Yorker. The verbal tussle happened in the Oval Office just days before Trump’s ill-advised bible photo op, which Milley attended. A senior military official told the New Yorker that the president and Milley “got into a shouting match” with Milley insisting the military could not be dispatched against American civilians. “I’m not doing that,” he reportedly told Trump. “That’s for law enforcement.” The New Yorker source then described Milley as brash and pushy, adding, “We have a bully in the White House, and a bully needs a bully.” Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, disputed the account, telling the New Yorker, “There was no shouting match, in terms of any directions or any operational decision that was made.”
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