House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that she spoke to Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about available precautions that would prevent ‘an unstable president’ – Donald Trump – from ‘ordering a nuclear strike’ or even accessing nuclear launch codes. and other military hostilities.
“The situation of this out-of-control president couldn’t be more dangerous, and we must do everything we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced attack on our country and our democracy,” said Pelosi, D-Calif., In a letter to fellow Democratic lawmakers.
A spokesman for the Office of the Joint Chiefs said Pelosi made a phone call to Milley and “answered her questions about the nuclear command process.”
The Pentagon and the National Security Council have not responded to CNBC’s requests for comment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Speaks at her weekly press conference in Washington on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021.
Caroline Brehman | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Pelosi’s letter comes two days after a crowd of Trump supporters outside and inside the Capitol rose after a rally where the president encouraged them to “ fight ” him to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the next president of the United States. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in the riot.
The portion of the letter that refers to her conversation with Milley is entitled “Preventing a Runaway President From Using Nuclear Codes”.
“This morning, I spoke with Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley to discuss available precautions to prevent an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Pelosi wrote.
Air Force General John Hyten, who is currently Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech three years ago that he would oppose carrying out a Trump order to launch nuclear weapons if he said such an order as ” illegal “.
Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and other Democratic lawmakers have demanded that Trump be removed from office, either by invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution or by impeachment.
In her letter, Pelosi told lawmakers, “Nearly fifty years ago, after years of empowering their rogue president, Republicans in Congress told the president [Richard] Nixon it was time to go. “
Today, after the president’s dangerous and inflammatory acts, the Republicans in Congress must follow suit and call on Trump to leave office immediately. If the president does not leave office at short notice and voluntarily, Congress will continue our action.”
James Schlesinger, who was Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, has said that during the closing days of the Watergate crisis, he ordered military commanders to contact him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger should Nixon lead a nuclear launch.
At the time, Nixon was drinking heavily because he lost public and congressional support.
At a meeting, according to “The Final Days,” a book about the end of his presidency, Nixon told a group of congressmen, “I can go to my office and pick up a phone and within 25 minutes millions of people will be dead.”
That prompted Senator Alan Cranston, D-Calif., To warn Schlesinger of “the need to prevent a bad president from plunging us into a holocaust.”