A Capitol Hill reckoning for top US general may again put Trump's political storms on full display
CNN
Former President Donald Trump shows every sign of aspiring to a new presidency that would shake America's democracy to its core. But a highly charged congressional hearing Tuesday will underscore the institutional and political wreckage still smoldering in the wake of his first White House term.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee along with other senior Pentagon officials to testify over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. This issue is crucially important by itself, not least because of the deaths of 13 US service personnel in Kabul in a suicide attack and the killing of Afghan civilians -- including seven children -- in a botched US drone strike last month. Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, are expected to face a grilling on the much-criticized planning and execution of the end of America's longest war.
But Milley's testimony may also open him up to questions about his last weeks and months serving Trump, highlighting how he has become one of the most politicized senior military leaders of recent times. He is one of several normally apolitical figures dragged into the partisan fray, largely due to extreme pressures imposed on the fabric of US government -- and the barriers that normally exist between politics and the military -- by the former commander in chief.