Ten days after leaving the White House with President Trump and walking with him across a park that had been forcibly cleared of protesters, the nation's most senior military officer is calling that excursion "a mistake."
"I should not have been there," Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared Thursday in a video message to graduating officers at the National Defense University. "My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics."
Milley has drawn pointed criticism from retired military officers not only for accompanying the president in what turned out to be a staged photo-op in front of a boarded-up St. John's Church, but for having done so dressed in baggy battle fatigues. The four-star Army general appeared to express regret for that, as well.
"We who wear the cloth of our nation come from the people of our nation, and we must hold dear the principle of an apolitical military that is so deeply rooted in the very essence of our republic," Milley said in the commencement address. "And this is not easy."
Milley, whom Trump chose last year to hold the military's highest rank, also admonished the graduating class of commissioned officers to embrace the U.S. Constitution.
"The freedoms guaranteed to us in the Constitution allow people to demand change, just as the peaceful protesters are doing all across the country," he said. "As you graduate today, reflect on what you have witnessed over the past two and a half weeks — what it means to all of us as Americans, and what it means to you and I, as leaders."
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