The Washington Post's Bob Woodward claimed that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley's calls to his Chinese counterpart in the final months of the Trump presidency were made "in the interest of protecting the country."
Last week, Woodward and his colleague Robert Costa released an excerpt from their upcoming book, "Peril," that detailed two secret calls, one on Oct. 30 and another on Jan. 8, that were made to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, where Milley allegedly ensured China that the U.S. would not strike and that he would give them a heads up in the event that an attack was planned by former President Donald Trump, who was not made aware of the calls.
Woodward, during a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s "The Last Word," suggested that Milley’s calls to Li were justified because "sensitive intelligence" showed that, in the days leading up to the 2020 election, the Chinese believed the U.S. was "going to launch an attack on them."
"Our reporting? Zero evidence, absolutely zero evidence of some sort of treason or the idea of doing something not in the interest of protecting the country," Bob Woodward says about General Milley. pic.twitter.com/SwdbKlAhNC
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 21, 2021
"I think at the center of all of this we should say the reporting we did shows that everything Milley did was to protect the country," Woodward said. "The idea that he committed treason is totally unsupported by — I mean, there is just nothing in our reporting."
"And when he says to General Li, head of the Chinese military, if we are going to attack you, I will call you … he’s saying not that he’s going to tip him off, but the tensions will build up. This is the way it always happened in history," he continued.
This comes as Republicans have called Milley's secret communications with the Chinese treasonous and have demanded he resign. Liberals, on the other hand, have deemed the chairman as a "patriot" for purportedly preventing Trump from attacking the communist country.
Milley has previously said he would answer any questions on his calls to the Chinese during his scheduled testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 28 about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.