Pentagon chief defends Milley after Trump book criticism | TheHill

He doesn’t have a political bone in his body,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.“I clearly have tremendous faith and confidence in the chairman,” he added.Conservatives have heavily criticized Milley in the past several weeks for newly revealed scenes during the Trump administration, written about in several recently released books.An excerpt from the book "I Alone Can Fix It," by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, said Milley was so concerned Trump might try to stay in power through a coup in the last days of his presidency that he discussed it with his deputies.The authors wrote that Milley saw Trump as "the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” and “told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.”Following that revelation, Fox News host Tucker CarlsonTucker CarlsonWhite House has reached out to Fox, other networks on vaccines Hannity: 'I believe in the science of vaccination' White House looks to cool battle with Facebook MORE called for Milley to be fired and Trump said he should be court-martialed if the statements were true.A clash between Trump and Milley is also quoted in an upcoming book from The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” That book describes a scene in which Trump yelled at Milley while expressing his desire to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy active-duty troops to Washington, D.C., amid civil unrest in the wake of last year’s police killing of George Floyd.