Woodward's new tome, Peril, captures the deep concern our military leaders, including General Mark Milley, had that Trump would launch a military attack to prop up his phony election fraud claims.

On Monday night, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa joined Lawrence O'Donnell. They discussed General Milley's actions as Trump turned to maniacal efforts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

Fearing Trump would do a "wag-the-dog" type attack on China or another nation to distract from his election loss, Milley met with his team and contacted counterparts in other countries to calm concerns about US military action. Gen. Milley has now been under attack by right-wing media and the GQP as a traitor, even though he actually took no action at all.

Woodward explains that General Milley was worried about a Pearl Harbor attack from China as a retaliation to a possible Trump move.

Woodward said, "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. The idea that he committed treason is totally unsupported..."

"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. This is a man who devoted his entire life to the United States military..." Woodward said.

Let's put this into some context after the horrific actions of outright murder by 2nd Lt. William “Rusty” Calley in Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam.

Any soldier can refuse a direct order if they knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.

If Trump ordered an attack on China for no reason at all except to try and steal a free and fair election that he lost, every military leader would have a constitutional duty to refuse and reject it.

The right-wing noise machine calling for Milley's head is just blowing hot air.

A reminder from earlier this week: