milley: sure.avid: in hindsight, do you think some it could have done a better job of protecting the capitol, or whoever it was, could have done a better job? gen. milley: i will let the january 6 commission and other the other various investigations do the postmortems on it. it is obvious the capitol was breached. it was a very significant event, one of the most significant events in recent history. i will let the historians and the commission and investigators sort through that. david: ok. you also had afghanistan. we have withdrawn from afghanistan after 20 years. the exit from afghanistan is one where we lost 13 u.s. military in the process. in the hindsight, could the exit have been executed better? gen. milley: there is a few things that could have been done better. one is the intelligence piece. you know, and army that was on paper, 350,000, maybe on paper 250,000, maybe, not 100% sure of the number, i suppose, but an army and police force of that size and government that literally collapses

milley: for sure.rew up in a neighborhood that emphasized patriotism and the idea that this country was an amazing country and have opportunities that are not available elsewhere. so early on i decided i did not want to serve, i wanted to be in the nhl, but i wanted to serve my country as well. when i went to school, there was an opportunity to join rotc. . so i played hockey, join rotc and try to study once in a while. i was attracted to the rotc program. never thought i would make a career in the military. thought i would do my four years and then get out. david: so you go into the military and after four years, you discharge or obligation, your rotc obligation, then you can go into whatever you want to do. but you decide to make it a career, is that right? gen. milley: i decided to take it in small chops. i really enjoyed the military. i was in the infantry and in the special forces, and i wanted to stay and see how that worked out. once i was capped, it was just taking it in small shops. i never ha

milley, general milley went with him, regretted it, later apologized for having gone, especially in his fatigues. then the secretary of defense mark esper did an interesting thing. having heard this use of possible use of the insurrection act to mobilize the military against black lives matter demonstrators. mark esper announced publicly announced that there was no need to invoke the insurrection act. trump was furious. he was furious and he yelled at esper you are taking we might authorities. >> he would not be pushed around and the unabashedly shoved his statesman at trump was sitting at the resolute desk. this is what i said. understand, don't misinterpret it. so this is one of the many incidents where milley just said, my god, there is a mental decline here. there is a danger and he had a wonderful phrase for it, which i want to read i don't ruin it. for milley said, this is the absolute darkest moment of theoretical possibility. in other words, the moment was dark but the possibility was theoretical, but then it became real when you mix it with the trump personality and this irrati

general milley, you did as well.i know there's been a lot of talk over whether president trump should have been negotiating with the taliban. that's a different conversation for another day. but those terms agreed to were not really complied with by the taliban. and general milley, we know in your testimony, seven of the eight conditions given to the taliban were broken. in light of that failure, secretary austin, do you think it was wise for us to continue with the timeline or did we feel compelled? because i constantly hear the administration pushing back saying, we had no choice, our hands were tied, the trump administration tied our hands to the timeline. but the taliban didn't comply with their end of the deal. and now we are stuck in a bad situation. do you feel that we should have pushed the timeline, not necessarily to stay in afghanistan, i get it. there is a time for us to start negotiating and exit. but in light of how disastrous and hasty the withdrawal turned out to be, we could have used more time to ge

general milley. i assume you agree with that in terms of the recommendation of 2500? >> what i said in my opening statement and the memoranda that i wrote back in the fall of 2020 remained consistent. and i do agree with that. >> this committee is unsure as to whether or not general miller's recommendation ever got to the president. you know, obviously there are conversations with the president. but i would like to ask, even though general mckenzie i think you have all made this statement, did you talk to the president about general miller's recommendation? >> sir, i was present when that discussion occurred. and i'm confident the president heard the recommendations and left hand to them thoughtfully. >> one of the recommendations made by the three of you would be the recommendation that originally was made by general miller's two weeks ago. during the august 18 interview on abc, george stephanopoulos asked president biden whether u.s. troops would stay beyond august 31st if there are still americans

to general milley, any additional thoughts? >> the three choices that you laid out for us, your questions were was it because of insufficient training, was it because the troops were demoralized or was it because we wanted things for them more than they wanted it for themselves. i would agree with general mckenzie that, you know, the doha agreement had a significant impact on the morale of the troops, but i would say that's compounded by weak leadership, corruption in the government, and, you know, the fact that, you know, the taliban made a concerted effort to really reach out to leaders and convince them the taliban was going to be in charge, so they might as well sign up with them early on. >> my time is expired. i yield back, thank you. >> senator cotton. >> you lay out details with the circumstances of the chinese counter park in january 2021, i want to ask for three set of documents. the first two should be fairly straightforward, one, could we get the list of people who joined you on those calls by name and title. >> yes

general milley, did you want to add to that? >> i've had several conversations over the years and also recently with pakistanis and there's no question in my mind the relationship between pakistan and the taliban is going to become increasingly complex. at least a whole series of issues there that have national security interests for the united states that are best handled in a different session. >> thank you. can you -- and secretary austin, can you talk about what we're doing to work with our european counterparts who, based on conversations that i've had with some of the civilians from our nato allies, there was some frustration about the communication that led to the withdrawal and the evacuation. are we working to rebuild those relationships? do you see that frustration reflected in the military relationships that you had? >> i don't, senator. and, you know, i understand that there will be concerns. but as i engage my counterparts, they're all very willing to work with us. and, you know, i don't want to sound pollyanna-ish

if milley thinks that we think we're about to be attacked. are suggesting it could have credited instability. would general lee go up the chain to xi . >> absolutely, in china's structure. xi jinping is head of chinese military. and military is very tightly controlled in china because the communist party civilians are worried about the military because there have been a number of attempted coops. certainly xi jinping knew about this immediately. mark: yet president trump did not. because general milley did not go to president trump to let him know about the conversation he initiated twice with head of communist military. this is appalling to me, head of communist party in china would have known. that commander in chief of u.s. did not know. does that bother you. >> it bothers me, this is this is breaking the chain of command. this is a military office usurping the administration, this is a serious matter. >> general milley said i told secretary of defense esper. acting secretary of defense miller, i guess his name was, he was there about 3 da

howie: the book said milley informed some officials but milley's version, and he's doing damage control here, is far less dramatic if the general was briefing even the trump white house, it's hard to make the case he went a traitor ous route. some questions questioned why he spoke to woodward at all. >> when bob woodward calls, i'm busy. i have a foreign policy to try to save, instead of you're not going to believe how crazy donald trump is. howie: i don't fully agree with that. you may not like what milley said or did. he's entitled to offer his side to journalists and authors as donald trump did in speaking to the authors of several recent books. the rest of the media need to scrutinize what really happened. i'm howard kurtz and this is media buzz. ♪ howie: the biggest take-away is that our top generals warned president biden that failing to leave a small contingent of in afghanistan could quickly lead to a taliban takeover. >> we should keep a he steady state of 2500, could bounce up to 3500. my position was, if you go below 2500, you're going to look at a collapse of the afghan mili

general milley, i want to come back to you. we discussed that you have had conversations with woodward, costa, rutger, and bender on their books, correct? >> not costa. >> you did not on costa. >> woodward, yes, and others. >> we'll leave that as a point of discussion. okay. in any of these conversations, did you discuss private meetings with the president or white house officials? >> white house officials perhaps. the president i don't think so. >> so you never discussed any of your conversations with president trump? >> with president trump -- >> with any of these authors. >> not a private conversation with president trump. >> did you portray the commander-in-chief in a negative light or make comments that were critical of the commander-in-chief to any of these authors with which you had conversations? >> not my comments or my observations, no. others that were relayed to me from others perhaps. >> i'm looking forward to your book report. >> great. >> would you see these conversations as an abuse of executive privilege? >> i

i think general milley learned from that. he had a very different response to the january 6th insurrection and the activities leading up to it. i think that was a -- sort of a dress rehearsal, if you will, and he learned about, you know, the proper role of, you know, civilian control of the military but also not to be used as a prop. so, certainly, donald trump praised him when he was helping donald trump's cause, and he's going to criticize him for what he did, according to my colleagues, bob woodward and robert costa, but general milley testified under oath that he reached out to china to calm relations, to calm fears there, at the request of political appointees in the trump administration. so, the trump people are now turning against him for doing exactly what they asked him to do in the first place. >> it's interesting because your colleague, david ignacious, had a different take or perspective in talking about how the testimony kind of was this refreshing take on looking behind the scenes as to what went wrong. why this

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general mark milley and general kenneth mckenzie both making itrecommended about a 2500 u.s. troops stay in afghanistan to stop a taliban takeover. let's bring in retires four-star general jack keane, fox news senior strategic analyst. welcome, general. let's start with that 2500-figure recommendation. that's been consistent with what you've been saying ail along the military advised the president. what does that add, in your view, to the president's decision? >> yeah. well, even though it was wildly reported, paul, that the military clearly did not agree with the president about a unconditional withdrawal of a all of our troops and, obviously, they a wanted to keep them a modest force of 2500, it was still remarkable and stunning to listen to the testimony of our top military leaders contradict the president's public statements on same issue. i don't have a personal frame of reference to something like that ever occurring before. that's because the president said in an interview that there was no real disagreement from the military leaders and hi

terror over general milley?> absolutely not. >> general mckinsey? >> the war on terror is not over in and the war in afghanistan is not over. >> has it made the war more challenging for us are less challenging? with respect to continuing to protect the homeland and u.s. interests abroad? >> senator has made it more challenging. >> the "wall street journal" article published on august 31 u.s. officials acknowledge the military has brought 90% of the intelligence capabilities before the drawdown. do you agree with that? >> i didn't see the report and again what it said? >> said? >> and said we have lost 90% of our intelligence capabilities using drones before the drawdown. >> i'll have to look at the actual math. i have my j. to doing that right now to determine the assets and statistics. it is significant but i don't know if it's 97%. >> is it fairr to say that our human intelligence didn't work given the current status and is it fair to say that's been pressed even more so than our drain -- drone surveillance ca

general milley, on bagram. in your professional military opinion, which facility, hkia or bagram would have been most efficient in conducting the evacuation we were forced to do? >> hkia. there is a reason for that. the majority, the vast majority of those personnel that we expected to have to conduct a neo where in kabul. that's 0.1. point to is that we were directed to maintain the embassy open. and also the international zone for the other allied nations. we had to do it out of hkia. bagram would have been a plus but it would have required exceptional resources. >> okay. i think all of you testified yesterday that it wasn't a matter of if the afghan army would bail and the taliban would take over, it was a matter of when. you were all shocked by the rate at which it happened. the billions of dollars in equipment that was left behind has been under much scrutiny. knowing that they were going to fail, why weren't more steps taken to secure that military equipment? or destroy it? knowing that now it's a well eq

quote, you testify general milley had adequate resources. said you wanted to, quote, assess the situation and make recommendations to the president. end quote. did you give advice the president on the withdrawal from afghanistan without conditions or is that the advice you got from him? >> again, my recommendations were a part of a very deliberate process where we presented a range of options for the president. and if i could, senator, i'd like to go back to the first comment you made about the question i answered for a reporter who asked why don't you go out and establish cordens and create safe passageways for our people just to move into the airport? at that point, early on in our deployment, we only had -- we had less than 4,000 -- or about 4,000 troops to secure and defend the airport. and our troop presence continued to grow as we flowed people in. we used a number innovative approaches to go out and pick up and facilitate the entry of american citizens into the airport, as the situation continued to develop. but just wanted to give yo

dan: milley is a swamp guy.ek, they are all about free speech, sorry, i got to laugh but screw tube, as they call it, they removed a bunch stories, a vladimir putin critic and they responded like well, we got to deal with government, just say that and you are not free speech and you're not about that and trying to make money in russia and stop pretending like free speech, the website sucks. >> that's the key, i don't think anyone was surprised vladimir putin exerts control over youtube and russia and as we speak, youtube take some videos of anyone who questioned in any way to vaccine. an event they seemed as vaccine hesitant, those videos are coming down. i'm sure you had videos coming down on youtube so why? we understand why you take down videos in russia and whose exert over the core value of free speech, what's happening in america? why are you taking on the same videos in this country? go core fundamental value of free speech here at home? that's what i care about. dan: they figure catering to the world, th

host: to that end, mark milley last week testifying on capitol hill about an instance that you recall. before we go to him, explain what happened in the opening pages of your book concerning a conversation general milley had with the house speaker. guest: it's important to read the book, because the book shows the chairman millie in october 2020 and january 8, 2021 as a conversation with the head of the people's liberation army and in both instances, milley, within his procedures as chairman of the chief of staff was trying to de-escalate a situation where he worried that the chinese, based on u.s. intelligence, the chinese could think the u.s. was about to attack them. so the u.s. and millie specifically wanted to move the chinese away from the idea or suggestion that the u.s. could have a wag the dog type of attack on china. as the book notes, president trump did not want war with china. millie knew that and we have it in our book. the whole point was about getting away from miscommunication. because history has shown that miscommunication can often be the seed of war. so general mi

and milley says, "oh, don't worry, we have procedures," and so forth. really saying to each other. and then after the call, milley thinks, you know, she's right. we better worry about trump. and so he calls in the colonels and one-star generals and admirals into his office from the war room in the pentagon-- >> stephen: people in the nuclear chain of command. >> yes. and not just nuclear, but any military action. and he says, "all right, we have these procedures. don't take a call from the president without me being involved. do you understand that?" and he goes around the room. "got it?" "yes, sir." "got it? got it? got it?" "yes, sir." and now, he's not seizing power. he's putting in precautions to make sure if trump's going to blow up the world, or do something that's against american interest or in fact against trump's interest, he's going to at least be there at the table saying-- "no!" >> stephen: one of the things that is striking to me about the last four years, as much as the former president wanted to be a strongman, what do you think those fo

milley's a new crack into the swamp for a reason.he most political. instead of spending time informing the president on how to safely evacuate afghanistan, he's giving book interviews. and instead of lloyd austin going in to congress and telling them we had a plan, not an evacuation emergency, he's telling the american people he doesn't even know, the secretary of defense does not know if there's a thousand american citizens stranded in afghanistan, and they have no plans to get them in place. instead, they're bringing home captive hearn soldiers because of their disastrous efforts. and then the national security apparatus when they start blaming one another, the secretary of defense is blaming the state department for not removing americans? the state department is not the department of defense. the dod has the planes, the helicopters, the soldiers, the necessary equipment to go in and safeguard our personnel, not the diplomats. it's outrageous. maria: real quick, we've got to jump, but you think we're going to go back to afghanista

alix: that was general mark milley. the full conversation on the david rubenstein show tonight at 9:00. in the morning when we came in, it was a risk off field to the markets, whether it was fx, bond, equity markets. you saw some buying come into the u.s., and then it shifted. maybe it was this interview coming out or hitting the record highs in the s&p's. then we saw some serious moves in the bond market. selling on the short end in the u.s., buying on the back and led by canada. francine: we heard from the bank of canada accelerating the timing of their rate hikes, so they said they would stop their bond buying program and moved to reinvestment. that also moved markets in canada significantly. the canadian dollar is now rising. overnight rates maintaining at 0.25%. it reminded me of what happened at the bank of england. you don't have one of the major central banks reprice, but if you say if they are hawkish, what does that mean for the fed? we are all using the same supply chain, so maybe something to look at deeper.

yet mark milley claims that the u.s.late things by calling his chinese counterpart and saying if trump invades china we'll give you a heads up in advance. were you the director of national intelligence at the time. what does the intelligence say that -- around trump potentially invading china. what can you tell us? >> there was no credible intelligence that the chinese believed that to be the case. i mean, the story that bob woodward told where -- in his book, apparently where mark milley is the hero of that story, you know, reflects that on october 30th. 30th, generalmilley felt the nes chinese counterpart to deescalate. that's four days before the presidential election. the idea that something like that took place and mark milley as the president's principle military advisor didn't brief president trump on that or myself as the president's intelligence advisor didn't brief president trump would tell you that it just didn't happen. i have had trump cabinet members when the story broke contact me saying what is general m

milley: i think it is china, and i said that publicly many times.the future -- and i think we are living in a historical epic, actually -- where we are seeing the rise of a country that is unlike something we have seen probably ever before. and it is one of the great historical pivot points, i think, that we have ever witnessed, which is the rise of china. and from the reforms of 1975 and been joking -- bin jao ping, they had an incredible economic run, and with the military, that is really significant. as we go forward over the next 10, 20, 25 years, there is no question in my mind that the biggest geostrategic challenge to the united states will be china. i have no doubt about that at all. russia is important. russia has very significant capabilities. but i think china is the most significant geostrategic -- geo significant -- geostrategic threat we will face. david: china has a hypersonic missile that could theoretically go into space and then come down with a nuclear bomb, escaping our ability to knock it down. is that something i should be worr

mark: and yet president trump did not because general milley did not go to president trump to let himout the conversation that he initiated twice with the head of the communist military. this is quite appalling the head of the communist party would've known that the commander-in-chief of the united states did not know does that bother you. >> this bothers me is insubordination this is breaking the chain of command this is a military officer serving the constitution. yes this is extremely serious matter. mark: general milley said i told secretary of defense esper and the acting secretary of defense miller. that is that, i don't think that is that. whether you making a comment to the secretary of defense i looked at the statutory powers of the head of the joint chief and of course he reports to two people the secretary of defense and the commander-in-chief, is nothing to inform the commander-in-chief about what he was doing and then you see the support of constant leaking to reporters writing hostile reports against the united states and he says the other day that's because he believes

story to a president biden story, i think it did show the general milley had been unfairly accused ofme of his most rich difference critics and he actually did operate with the full knowledge of his civilians when he was making contacts in china. on the other hand the whole 2500 troops saying, first of all is a critical issue and it raised a critical conflict with the president story and the general story, not just general milley but general mckenzie as well, another issue the president doesn't really take a lot of questions, he does not expose himself to widen far-reaching questions and he needs to answer a lot of questions and follow-up questions about his decision in afghanistan. gerry: we have to take one more quick break when we come back the debate over vaccine mandates heated up as essential workers are being fired over the vaccination status how it struggling and will talk about all of that. >> people need to be vaccinated testing will not be an option. >> clearly i'm not considered a hero at five disposable paramedical choice. for so needed i don't understand why they're not

and people like the general milley, you know, he did this.decided from obama to biden, which is the same system, obama began the corrupting of america and some day people will write about how much his appointees and his policies and his rhetoric undermined america and weakened america and increased by the way racial tension in america. then his vice president came into office bringing even in thier people to be part of the government and, if you are a sophisticated washington politician. general, you look around. there is a great novel by anton called once a an eagle which takes two officers from the first world war up through vietnam. one is the kind of person you described with admiration, combat oriented, honest, willing to leave the service rather than lie. the other is a pure staff officer, politician, rising by telling power whatever it wants to hear. it's a great novel about the dangers we now face. and this is -- but this is true across everything. it's true in the news media. it's true in the universities. the depth of corruption, wh

people like mark milley mark milley, anthony fauci, on numerous occasions they have been caught lying, breaking their word, undermining the profession. what consequences have they ever faced? zero. the opposite happens, instead of being reprimanded, they are showered with accolades. >> dr. fauci is key for many of us. >> i would call general milley a hero, he behaves in a heroic manner. >> it's always good to talk to you, thank you for a steady hand during the crisis here in the empire state. >> at the same time, those brave enough to stand up and ask questions, who demand accountability from lieutenant colonel stuart schaller, they are punished. and her upside down world, grandmothers who wander around capital taking sylvie's face jail time as george floyd riders who looted and burned entire city blocks one free. americans are starting to wake up, that chicago police union had that i mentioned earlier telling officers to resist the cities vaccine mandate and force the mayor to relent. pro sports players are refusing to denounce fellow players who choose not to get faxed. >> everyone