President Donald Trump focused his ire and retaliation on one person in the very first minutes of his presidency, even before his inauguration concluded -- retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, the highest-ranking and most visible officer in the military during the president's first term in office.
On Jan. 20, as Trump was sworn in, Milley's recently unveiled portrait painting from his time as Joint Chiefs chairman was quietly removed from a hallway in the Pentagon that displays portraits of all former chairmen. A week later, another portrait of Milley, a retired Green Beret with more than 40 years of service, from his time as Army chief of staff was removed.
The humiliation wasn't over for Milley. Trump's newly appointed defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced he was ending Milley's security detail and initiating an investigation into the retired general to see whether they could strip him of rank, removing one of his stars in retirement.
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But the final blow for Milley might be the silence after the open retaliation by Trump, who campaigned on punishing his political enemies.
Few have come to Milley's defense and even the military, to which the four-star general had given decades of service, was unwilling to offer any pushback.
One recently retired general noted to Military.com that Milley is "as radioactive as it gets."
Military.com reached out to nearly a dozen current and retired general officers for comment on the actions the Trump administration has taken against Milley. None would speak even under the condition their names be withheld from publication to protect them from retaliation, a common practice in the press to allow officials to speak candidly when their views could draw retribution.
Keeping Milley at a distance, even anonymously, showed the widespread concern that Trump and his allies pose a threat to those who may fall out of step.
The president's effort to erase Milley's history and punish him in retirement appears to be unprecedented in recent history. Trump's allies argue that they are looking to hold Milley accountable for what they see as a betrayal of the president during the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Milley reached out to his Chinese counterpart amid the chaos to assure that country that the U.S. was not about to start a military conflict.
In his farewell speech at his retirement, Milley never mentioned Trump by name but pointedly said that service members "don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. … We don't take an oath to an individual."
"We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we're willing to die to protect it," he added.
Milley Wiped from Pentagon History
While removing a portrait may seem like a trivial matter, the Pentagon is not just office space -- its miles of hallways are also living memorials of military history and heritage.
Aside from each service dedicating hallways to their accomplishments and history, memorialized within the Pentagon are hundreds of leaders, heroes and battles that stretch back to the founding of the nation or the creation of the services. There are portraits of the secretaries of war, historical artifacts, and even dioramas so elaborate that one incorporates two Vietnam-era Huey helicopter cabs.
Among those displays are hallways lined with portraits of every chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, for the Army, a hallway with every chief of staff.
Both hallways now have gaps where Milley's portrait hung -- his service scrubbed from the living timeline of the Defense Department's headquarters. One editorial published Thursday called the move a "Soviet-style" purge.
Still, the response to the removal from all quarters has been an eerie silence.
The Pentagon, despite clearly being part of the effort to remove the portraits, had nothing to say.
Officials at the defense secretary's office said they had no comment on the removal of the first portrait and said to ask the Army about the removal of the second. The Army directed Military.com back to the secretary's office.
The office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a post now held by Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown, also had nothing to say on the matter.
No one in the Pentagon would even say who ordered the removal.
However, more notably, officials and groups that in years past would have rallied around a general under fire have remained silent as well.
Military.com reached out to both the Association of the U.S. Army, or AUSA, and the Military Officers Association of America, MOAA -- groups that advocate for soldiers and military officers, respectively -- and neither wished to say anything about Milley's treatment.
In contrast, when Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., held up the promotions of hundreds of senior military officers in 2023 in an effort to pressure the Pentagon to reverse its policy of covering travel and leave for service members who seek abortions, MOAA readily came to the defense of the generals.
Throughout the nearly yearlong hold, Tuberville argued that the Pentagon had more generals and admirals than it needed and that the military is the weakest it's been in his lifetime.
The head of MOAA, retired Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, said Tuberville's remarks were "insults ... that demean and disrespect the sacrifices they make in defending our nation."
"Future service members are watching this display of political theater and are reconsidering their decision to serve," Kelly wrote of Tuberville in a letter published in November 2023.
Milley's tenure as chairman was certainly rocky, and he was condemned by both Republicans and Democrats at various times for either his views on diversity in the military or his actions amid the violent national protests following the death of George Floyd.
But the biggest rift between the Army general and Trump came after the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. In the days after the insurrection, Milley made two calls to a Chinese general, Li Zuocheng.
"My task at that time was to deescalate," Milley told senators that year, and explained that he was hoping to calm fears in the Chinese top brass that the U.S. might attack China during the chaos and turmoil of a presidential transition that was being rocked by violence.
Milley was "certain" that the former president "did not intend on attacking the Chinese, and it is my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent," he said.
During his reelection campaign in 2023, Trump claimed Milley would have faced death "in times gone by" for the call.
However, Milley is not the first general to run afoul of his civilian bosses.
In the 1950s, during the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur clashed with President Harry Truman over the direction the conflict should take. MacArthur eventually ordered his troops to invade North Korea and push past the 38th parallel, scuttling Truman's efforts at a ceasefire.
"This was not the first time the general had ignored direct orders from his commander in chief," the Truman library website said.
MacArthur was relieved of command in April 1951 but returned to a hero's welcome at home. Since 1981, the Pentagon has honored the general with an entire hallway commemorating his life in uniform. Among the displays are MacArthur's medals, uniforms and personal effects.
The display sidesteps his firing and instead simply says one of the military's few five-star generals was ordered to turn over his command.
At the end of Milley's career, there were a few flowery farewells in the press as well. Long articles based on interviews with the general cast him as a defender of the Constitution during a historically trying time for the country.
Milley Investigated, Security Deal Nixed
Beyond the immediate removal of Milley's likeness from the Pentagon, Trump officials also made moves late one Tuesday to revoke the authorization for his security detail and suspended his security clearance.
Hegseth "has also directed the DoD IG to conduct an inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding Gen. Milley's conduct so that the secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination," Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said in a statement.
If Milley is ultimately demoted, the corresponding change in retirement payments could add up to a loss in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of the rest of his life.
The revoking of Milley's security detail comes at a time when several former Trump officials face threats from Iran stemming from his first administration's hard-line stance against the country -- and specifically the military's killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Several Republican lawmakers told hosts of political shows on Sunday that they had real concerns for the safety of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, two other officials stripped of their security detail by Trump as part of an apparent retaliation campaign.
The Guardian reported that, according to a former senior Biden administration official, the Trump administration was "well aware" of the "active threats" against the former government officials, and they called the move "highly irresponsible."
The move to strip Milley's security managed to elicit some calls of support from Democratic lawmakers.
On Wednesday, Sen. Jack Reed, D.-R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that it was "unconscionable and recklessly negligent for President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to revoke Gen. Milley's security detail for their own political satisfaction."
"The administration has placed Milley and his family in grave danger, and they have an obligation to immediately restore his federal protection," Reed added in a written statement.
Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Smith, D.-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that "removing Gen. Milley's security protections sets a dangerous precedent -- one that threatens to have a chilling effect on all those in uniform and those considering service to our country."
On Tuesday, reporters also noted that a portrait of Mark Esper was removed from the hallway of Army secretaries -- the civilian heads of the service. Esper served in the position during the first Trump administration before being named defense secretary.
Trump would later fire him from that post, days after he lost the election to Joe Biden.
Esper had long expected to be fired after being at odds with Trump over several issues, the most notable of which was his resistance to using active-duty troops on protesters during the height of the Black Lives Matter protest movement in 2020.
Esper's portrait as defense secretary, at the time of publication, was still hanging in the Pentagon, just feet from the door to the office now occupied by Pete Hegseth.
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