Days after cameras captured him walking alongside President Donald Trump across a square near the White House that had been violently cleared of protesters, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sat in his office across the Potomac assessing the fallout.

People whom Milley respected had issued scathing condemnations of his role in the president’s June 2020 photo op, saying it represented a military endorsement of Trump’s suppression of peaceful protests, and a chorus of commentators called for the general to resign. Friends urged Milley — a gruff, ebullient and sometimes impulsive career soldier — to stay on for the good of the country.

Milley tried to explain that the episode had caught him off guard, that he hadn’t known Trump’s intentions when they walked into an area where just minutes earlier authorities had used tear gas to disperse protesters. Milley also knew that to the cold gaze of history, it might not matter.

“The whole thing was f---ed up,” Milley, loquacious and often vulgar, told others after the fact.

A former altar boy, Milley’s Catholic faith informed a feeling that he needed to publicly account for what occurred. “You confess your sins, do your penance, and you move on,” he later told a colleague.

Equally important, Milley believed he was one of the few officials who retained influence with Trump, who many aides feared would heed calls to attack Iran or drag the military into his quest to remain in power.

fonte-washington post