In a formal tribute packed with pageantry at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia on Friday, President Joe Biden honored retiring Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, calling him “unflinching in the face of danger.”
“You’ve given remarkable service to our country, you've done honor to the uniform of our nation. You've upheld your oath,” Biden said in remarks at Friday’s ceremony.
Milley’s retirement ends his four-years as the nation’s top general – a tenure that saw a global pandemic, Russia invade Ukraine, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.
“When it comes to the Constitution, that is and always has been Mark’s North Star. I'm so damn proud to serve with him,” Biden said.
Milley took over the reins in 2019 after being nominated by former President Donald Trump. But the pair grew to have a tense relationship.
Milley pushed back against a host of Trump’s plans, including demands to pull all troops out of Iraq and Syria, his desire to put active-duty troops on Washington’s streets to counter racial protests, and his move to ban service by transgender men and women.
Recently, Trump railed against Milley in a post on Truth Social, condemning him as a treasonous, “Woke train wreck” whose actions have been “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
That prompted Biden on Thursday during a speech in which he warned American democracy was “still at risk” to call other Republicans’ lack of pushback on Trump’s comment “deafening.”
During his remarks on Friday, Milley delivered a full-force defense of democracy in what was an apparent swipe at the former president.
“We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” he said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
Biden on Friday also marked the entrance of his pick to take over the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff role: Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. Brown will be only the second Black officer in the position after Colin Powell.
“Like Gen. Milley, Gen. Brown is a patriot through and through – sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution,” Biden said Friday.
Just last week, the Senate confirmed Brown to take over the position after bypassing Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s months-long blockade on hundreds of military promotions over the Pentagon’s abortion policy – a move Biden railed against again in his remarks on Friday.
“I've been here a long time – I've never seen anything like this. It’s outrageous and it must stop,” he said.
Wrapping up his speech, the president recounted a few anecdotes: Milley, then a colonel, sitting with wounded soldiers in the hospital “so they wouldn’t be alone” and rounding up his troops for “an impromptu blood drive” when supply was low.
“That's leadership, that's patriotism, that's strength – that's Mark Milley,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.