General Mark Milley called the nationwide riots that arose after George Floyd‘s death in May 2020 “penny packet protests” and contended that they did not warrant a federal response, Fox News reported.
“Mr. President, they are not burning it [America] down,” Milley said in reference to former President Donald Trump‘s assertion that Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters wanted to destroy the United States.
These statements surfaced in Peril, a book co-authored by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa that also contains evidence that Milley committed treason near the end of Trump’s term when he promised to warn Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng about a potential American attack.
Trump denies having any intention to attack China, and no evidence has surfaced to support the claim.
Trump described the riots as an “insurrection” because Antifa and BLM established zones of anarchy, targeted government buildings, and sought to kill police officers.
In Trump’s conversations with military advisors, Milley first downplayed the riots.
“They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection,” Milley said. “We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests.”
Well beyond mere graffitiing, left-wing rioters used baseball bats, bricks, crowbars, homemade explosives, long rifles, and handguns to assault police officers and innocent civilians.
Then Milley justified the riots based on the Democrat Party’s systemic racism narrative.
“That’s pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality,” he said.
Milley falsely claimed that major riots were contained in two major cities and riots elsewhere attracted fewer than 300 people.
He said the riots lacked comparison to serious insurrections, like the Fort Sumter attack in 1861 that caused President Abraham Lincoln to retaliate against the South Carolina militia.
Yet Milley said the trespassing and property crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6 “was indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason.’”
He described the attack as “so unimagined and savage” that it “could be a dress rehearsal for something larger.”
He thought Trump wanted a “Reichstag moment.”
