Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley blasted U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz for mocking and opposing critical race theory during what was supposed to be a budget hearing. He left the Florida Republican Congressman speechless and only able to shake his head.
Milley, a General in the U.S. Army who has been in uniform since 1980 decimated Rep. Gaetz, his supporters, and conservatives in general for mocking the idea that systemic racism exists, while adding that he would like to better understand both critical race theory and “white rage.”
“First of all, on the issue of critical race theory, etc,.” Milley began. “A lot of us have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is, but I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform, to be open minded and be widely read, and the United States Military Academy is a university, and it is important that we train, and we understand, and I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it.”
“So, what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building, and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out,” Milley, who has degrees from Princeton, Columbia, and the Naval War College, declared. “I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it, it’s important that we understand that because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians, they come from the American people. So it is important that the leaders, now and in the future, do understand it.”
“I’ve read Mao Tse Tung, I’ve read, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin: that doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?”
“I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned and noncommissioned officers of being quote ‘woke,’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there. That was started at Harvard Law School, years ago, and it proposed that there were laws in the United States, antebellum laws prior to the Civil War that led to a power differential with African Americans that were three-quarters of a human being, when this country was formed, and then we had a civil war and Emancipation Proclamation to change it, and we brought it up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – took another 100 years to change that. So look it I do want to know, and I respect your service and you and I both Green Berets, but I want to know. And it matters to our military in the discipline and cohesion of this military, and I thank you for the opportunity to make a comment on that.”
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