Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images; Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
- Gen. Mark Milley thought of Trump advisor Stephen Miller as “a Rasputin character,” per a new book.
- “I Alone Can Fix It” details a conflict between Milley and Miller over the George Floyd protests.
- Milley told Miller to “shut the f— up” when the latter suggested to Trump that protesters were “burning the country down,” per the book.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Gen. Mark Milley thought of Trump advisor Stephen Miller as “a Rasputin character, always whispering devilish ideas in the king’s ear,” according to a new book about the last days of the Trump administration.
According to an excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” by Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker, Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confided in aides about his strong feelings regarding Miller.
Milley likened Miller to the villainous Grigori Rasputin, an influential Russian political figure also called the “Mad Monk,” who held significant influence over the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family. The self-professed holy man was later murdered by aristocrats.
According to Leonnig and Rucker, this tension between Milley and Miller, who was then senior adviser for policy and the White House director for speechwriting, came to the fore during the George Floyd protests last summer.
The book details a tense exchange between the two men, highlighting how Milley was particularly aggravated when Miller asked Trump to use armed troops to quell the protests.
“Mr. President, you have to show strength. They’re burning the country down,” the book claims Miller said during a meeting with the former president.
Per the book, it was at that point that Milley “whipped his head around” and castigated Miller, saying: “Stephen, shut the f— up. They’re not burning the f—ing country down.”
The book further claims that throughout this exchange, Trump watched the two “silently and eagerly, as if the argument between his advisers were a pay-per-view fight on HBO.”
The office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Miller did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Trump denied he ever discussed deploying the military during the 2020 George Floyd protests with Milley in a statement released on July 16.
“Despite the fact that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen, and while numerous people, including the outside public, were saying we should bring in the Military, I never even gave it a thought,” Trump wrote in the statement.
“Never once did I have a discussion with him about bringing in the Military, or a ‘coup,'” Trump added.
Trump has also hit out at Milley on a separate issue. On July 15, Trump released a long statement responding to claims that Milley was worried that he would plan a coup to overthrow the government. Writing that he’s “not into coups,” Trump added that even if he was, he “wouldn’t want to commit one with Gen. Mark Milley.”