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WASHINGTON (AP) Former President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that he wouldnt have used the military to illegally seize control of the government after his election loss. But he suggested that if he had tried to carry out a coup, it wouldnt have been with his top military adviser.

In a lengthy statement, Trump responded to revelations in a new book detailing fears from Gen. Mark Milley that the outgoing president would stage a coup during his final weeks in office. Trump said hes not into coups and never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government. At the same time, Trump said that if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The mere mention of a coup was a stunning remark from a former president, especially one who left office under the cloud of a violent insurrection he helped incite at the U.S. Capitol in January in an effort to impede the peaceful transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden. Since then, the FBI has warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown violent extremism.

Despite such concerns, Trump is maintaining his grip on the Republican Party. He was meeting on Thursday with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and has stepped up his public schedule, holding a series of rallies for his supporters across the country in which he continues to spread the lie that last years election was stolen from him.

His comment about a coup was in response to new reporting from I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trumps Catastrophic Final Year by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. The book reports that Milley was shaken by Trumps refusal to concede in the weeks after the election.

According to early excerpts published by CNN and the Post on Wednesday ahead of its release, Milley was so concerned that Trump or his allies might try to use the military to remain in power that he and other top officials strategized about how they might block him even hatching a plan to resign, one by one.

Milley also reportedly compared Trumps rhetoric to Adolf Hitlers during his rise to power.

This is a Reichstag moment, Milley reportedly told aides. The gospel of the Fhrer.

Milleys office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Milley has previously spoken out against drawing the military into election politics, especially after coming under fire for joining Trump on a walk through Lafayette Square for a photo op at a church shortly after the square had been violently cleared of protesters.

Trump, in the statement, mocked Milleys response to that moment, saying it helped him realize that his top military adviser was certainly not the type of person I would be talking coup with.

The book is one of a long list being released in the coming weeks examining the chaotic final days of the Trump administration, the Jan. 6 insurrection and the outgoing presidents refusal to accept the elections outcome. Trump sat for hours of interviews with many of the authors, but has issued a flurry of statements in recent days disputing their reporting and criticizing former staff for participating.

There is no evidence that supports Trumps claims that the election was somehow stolen from him. State election officials, Trumps own attorney general and numerous judges, including many appointed by Trump, have rejected allegations of massive fraud. Trumps own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the 2020 election the most secure in American history.

Trump remains a dominant force in Republican politics, as demonstrated by McCarthys visit on Thursday to the former presidents summer home in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Trump and McCarthy were expected to spend their meeting discussing upcoming special elections, Republicans record fundraising hauls and Democrats they see as vulnerable in the 2022 midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the agenda who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting. McCarthy previously met with Trump in January at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Meanwhile, Republicans who are eyeing White House bids of their own arent crossing Trump, who remains popular with many GOP voters.

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a potential 2024 presidential contender, said no comment, when asked if he thought Trumps statement was appropriate for a former president. A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an Army veteran of two combat tours in Iraq, Cotton declined to comment again when asked if he wanted to criticize Trumps remark.

I think he has the right to say what he wants to say, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, when asked if he was comfortable with a former president even hypothetically entertaining the idea of a coup.

You know, Donald Trump speaks for himself and he always has, said Cruz, another potential White House candidate in 2024.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

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Trump opines on coup while rejecting fears about his actions - Associated Press

Will former President Donald Trump launch his political comeback as a future speaker of the House of Representatives? Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is sending out fundraising appeals that tell the recipient to think of how great it will feel when we make our next Speaker of the House Donald J. Trump. Another portion of the fundraising letter includes a big red button that says: Join me: Lets get Trump as Speaker. Never mind that Trump no longer holds elected office, and may or may not even be interested in the job. The former president did respond somewhat favorably to the suggestion after being told he could use the position to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. What Biden might be investigated for is, of course, besides the point.

But Gaetzs fundraising efforts, using this extremely unlikely scenario, did get me thinking about the political, legal and logistical requirements for speaker, a position that has a lot of power but is less likely to be the topic of your average civics lesson.

To start off, does the speaker have to be an elected representative? Maybe not. As Pete Williams has noted previously for NBC News, the Constitution is silent on this question. So could the leader of the House of Representatives, the third person in the line of presidential succession, arguably be that guy on the street corner who is holding up a sign about chemtrails? This is America, after all, the land of opportunity.

Its important to note that every previous speaker has been an elected member of Congress. And that is almost unquestionably what the Founders intended. The surprising part here is that legally, such a requirement may be more custom than mandate.

Its important to note that every previous speaker has been an elected member of Congress.

The speaker holds an important role, and not just because he or she holds sway over one of our two federal legislative bodies. If disaster strikes, they are third in line to become president.

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 provides that if by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the speaker of the House resigns his or her position and acts as the president. So far so good, except for the small matter of the constitutionality of that 1947 law.

The Succession Clause in the Constitution provides that if both the president and the vice president are unable to discharge the powers and duties of said office, then Congress can name which Officer shall act as president until the original president has recovered or a new president is elected. The legal issue is whether the speaker is considered an officer.

On the one hand, there is some evidence that the drafters of the Succession Clause understood Officers to mean executive officials (like members of the Cabinet) and not legislators. This would mean Congress lacks the power under the Constitution to place the speaker of the House in the presidential line of succession. There are also structural reasons why a legislative leader may not be the best choice to serve as acting president. For instance, it could create a conflict of interest in the event of impeachment proceedings. On the other hand, there are two places in the Constitution in which the term Officers is used to refer to legislative officials. And members of the Second Congress apparently believed that placing the speaker in the line of presidential succession was permissible.

In addition to potential legal landmines, there are plenty of political questions to consider when it comes to the current line of succession. If the Electoral College elects a Republican president and vice president, there is something rather problematic about installing a Democratic speaker as the acting president (assuming the speaker at the time is a Democrat).

What is the solution here? Congress could always pass a new statute, consistent with the Constitution, that provides that the third in line for the presidency must be a member of the Cabinet, like the secretary of state. (This was previously the case, from 1886 to 1947). Because when it comes to issues like who will be in charge of leading our country, it feels best not to wait for a catastrophe to clarify this relatively key point.

The Trump era has brought us plenty of fascinating legal hypotheticals. But, if Gaetzs fundraising somehow sparks a push for Trump to become speaker, we may be seeing more musings along these line soon. Changing the presidential line of succession could quickly become impossibly politically charged. Imagine a world with both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris indisposed in which Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Speaker Donald Trump contend that they are each the acting president. It's an unlikely (and dystopian) scenario but not a technically impossible one.

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Matt Gaetz says Trump should become speaker of the House. Is that possible? - MSNBC

A new report alleging Russian spy agencies were told to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election is disgusting and fiction, the former president said Thursday.

This is disgusting, Trump tweeted through spokeswoman Liz Harrington. Its fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news. Its just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right.

Its fiction, and nobody was tougher on Russia than me, including on the pipeline, and sanctions, the tweet said. At the same time we got along with Russia.

Russia respected us, China respected us, Iran respected us, North Korea respected us. And the world was a much safer place than it is now with mentally unstable leadership.

At issue is a new report by the Guardian that Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a secret spy agency to find practical ways to support Trumps bid for the White House during a Jan. 22, 2016, meeting at the Kremlin.

According to the report, Putin deemed Trump mentally unstable and believed his accession to the White House would create social turmoil and weaken the US.

The report, which the Guardian said is based on leaked Kremlin documents, claims Trump was identified as the most promising candidate.

The documents include a psychological assessment describing Trump as an impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex.

The Guardian said the documents were shown to Western intelligence officials who believed they were genuine.

However, a spokesman for the Kremlin denied the claims, and called the Guardian report pulp fiction.

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Donald Trump slams 'disgusting' report on Russian interference in 2016 election - New York Post

Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail with a rally in Ohio on Saturday night, campaigning against a Republican who voted for his impeachment and trailing his own candidacy for president in 2024.

Trump repeated his baseless election 2020 grievances and painted a dystopian picture of the country under Democratic control, while in another echo the past, the crowd chanted Lock her up at the mention of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in 2016.

The rally outside Cleveland on Saturday was to support Max Miller, a former White House aide challenging Anthony Gonzalez, a former college football and NFL star censured by his state party for voting for Trumps impeachment.

While he praised Miller as an incredible patriot and a great guy who loves the people of Ohio, Trump spent much of the rally fixating on the 2020 election, which he insists he won. This is despite top state and local election officials, his own attorney general and numerous judges, including some he appointed, saying there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud he alleges took place.

The 2020 presidential election was rigged, he told the crowd, which at one point broke into a Trump won! chant. We won that election in a landslide.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia known for her incendiary rhetoric, asked the crowd who their president is, they boomed loudly, Trump!

President Trump is my president, too, she said.

The event had many of the trappings of the rallies Trump held as a candidate and as president. There was the eclectic playlist, the same stage design, and many familiar volunteers.

In the lead-up to the event, Trump told the conservative Newsmax channel: Were giving tremendous endorsements.

Fake Republicans, anybody that voted for the impeachment doesnt get it. But there werent too many of them. And I think most of them are being primaried right now, so thats good. Ill be helping their opponent.

Trumps first impeachment, for abusing his power in approaches to Ukraine, attracted one Republican vote, that of the Utah senator Mitt Romney. In his second, for inciting the deadly US Capitol attack, 10 House Republicans and seven in the Senate voted for Trumps guilt.

Trump was acquitted twice but banned from major social media platforms over his role in the Capitol attack. Regardless, he dominates the Republican party.

All bar one of the House Republicans who voted against him have attracted challengers. The 10th, John Katko of New York, co-authored a proposal for an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate the 6 January attack on Congress, in which a mob roamed the Capitol, looking for lawmakers to capture or kill in an attempt to overturn the election. Senate Republicans blocked it.

By Saturday afternoon, traffic was backed up from the fairgrounds into town, where pro-Trump signs dotted residents lawns. On street corners, vendors sold Trump 2024 flags and other merchandise as supporters arrived.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman from Georgia who was stripped of her committee assignments over a number of extreme comments, mingled with attendees and took pictures.

Trump has said he didnt win the election but has not formally conceded defeat by Joe Biden and continues to voice his lie that the loss was the result of electoral fraud.

On Friday he told Newsmax he would be making an announcement in the not too distant future about whether he will run again, and said supporters were going to be thrilled by election results in 2024.

We want a little time to go by, maybe watch what happens in [2022], he said.

In those midterm elections, Republicans hope to retake the House and Senate.

Trumps legal problems mounted on Friday, as his own lawyer confirmed that charges are likely in the investigation of the Trump Organization by the Manhattan district attorney. The companys chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and the company itself are in prosecutors sights.

Many observers point out that Trumps many legal problems did not stop him winning the presidency in 2016 and are unlikely to put off many Republican voters should he run for the White House again.

In his Newsmax interview, the former president referred to his problems and to those affecting Rudy Giuliani, Trumps lawyer and loyal ally. The former New York mayor this week saw his law license suspended, over his advancement of Trumps election fraud lie.

Right now, Trump said, Im helping a lot of people get into office, and were fighting the deep state, and were fighting [the] radical left. Theyre after me, Theyre after Rudy, theyre after you, probably. Theyre after anybody.

The deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart Trump. Steve Bannon, Trumps campaign chairman in 2016 then a White House strategist and chief propagator of the theory, has said it is for nut cases.

Theyre vicious, Trump went on, and they dont do a good job and theyre very bad for the country But Ive been fighting them for five and a half years.

Since I came down the escalator [at Trump Tower in New York in June 2015, to announce his run for president], Ive been fighting them. These are vicious people I honestly believe they dont love this country.

Trump has spent much of his post-presidency at his Florida resort and his golf course in New Jersey. He also told Newsmax he was working very hard not only for 2024, but were working very hard to show the corruption of what took place in 2020, and then we see what happens.

Trumps rallies have been an instrumental part of his brand since he launched his 2016 campaign. The former reality star often test-drives new material and talking points to see how they resonate with crowds. His political operation uses the events to collect critical voter contact information and as fundraising tools.

The rallies have spawned hardcore fans who traveled the country, often camping out overnight to snag prime spots. Some such supporters began lining up outside the Ohio venue days early this week.

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Donald Trump returns to campaign trail with rally ...

I just think its been going on for so long that people are kind of tired of it, said Tony Kurtz, a GOP assemblyman from rural Juneau County, which went for Trump last year by nearly 30 percentage points.

For more than seven months since he lost the election, Trump has engaged in a crusade against Republicans who crossed him, an effort he invigorated with a rally in Ohio on Saturday, where he traveled to campaign against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who voted to impeach him earlier this year. In most cases, the Republican base has responded zealously. But here, at a convention center attached to a water park, the lack of interest from the rank-and-file suggested some of the first, tentative signs of weariness of Trumps smash-mouth political act.

Even Sen. Ron Johnson, an unfailing Trump ally, broke with the former presidents criticism of Johnsons home-state lawmakers, dismissing Trumps suggestion that they could be primaried.

I dont think that represents much of a threat, quite honestly, Johnson said, describing Vos and his colleagues as doing a pretty good job.

Trump remains wildly popular among Wisconsin Republicans no less than in other states and the belief in his false claim that the election was rigged is widespread, underpinning a raft of elections-related legislation passed by Republican lawmakers in the state this month. At the state convention, activists cheered for Trump when organizers played a recorded message in which Trump repeated his falsehood that he carried the state in November. The convention included a panel on election law changes, the state party homepage prominently features an election integrity dashboard and delegates carried tote bags that read Defend secure elections.

Brian Jennings, chair of the GOP in Florence County, a sparsely populated Trump stronghold in northern Wisconsin, said Trump is the Republican Party right now, and on the sidelines of the convention, several delegates said Trump was right that Vos hadnt done enough to overturn the results of the election.

But unlike in states like Georgia and Arizona, there wasnt widespread interest in purging the states Assembly speaker for it a departure from Trumps dominion over the Republican Partys apparatus in the states.

Thats Wisconsin for you, said Helmut Fritz, a delegate from Milwaukee who sits on the state partys credentials committee. Trump isnt the dictator.

In part, Voss avoidance of punishment is the result of shrewd politics. Though he has frustrated Republicans who want Wisconsin to pursue an Arizona-style review of the election, Vos is neither a Trump critic nor a defender of the November elections integrity in the mold of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp or Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. He has infuriated Democrats by hiring three retired police officers to investigate potential irregularities and/or illegalities in the November election. And at the convention, he announced that a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman, will oversee the effort.

Following that news which an operative familiar with the arrangement said was in the works for weeks Trump said at his rally in Ohio that I hear now that Wisconsin is looking very, very seriously into the election and I respect Wisconsin so much.

But for the purposes of the Wisconsin state convention, he had all but invited attendees to engage in a pile-on. In his statement issued the night before Vos spoke, Trump, seeking to stoke grassroots outrage, accused Vos, LeMahieu and state Sen. Chris Kapenga of working hard to cover up election corruption actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit.

Dont fall for their lies! Trump wrote. These REPUBLICAN leaders need to step up and support the people who elected them by providing them a full forensic investigation. If they dont, I have little doubt that they will be primaried and quickly run out of office.

On Sunday, a Trump adviser said the former president remains adamant about doing audits and is going to keep up pressure on Republicans to have the courage to do it.

President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

So far this year and in other states, Trumps broadsides against Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to him have been met with enthusiasm from activists. Utah Republicans heckled Romney, an outspoken Trump critic, at their state convention in May. Republicans in Georgia booed Kemp. The GOP governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, was censured by his party for his lack of fealty to Trump.

At the convention in Wisconsin, it was a different story. One delegate deleted Trumps statement from his phone, saying he wished Trump would shut up, and Im a big Trump supporter. Another delegate said he hadnt even bothered to read it.

David Blaska, a former Dane County supervisor who worked as a speechwriter for former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson, said a lot of people still believe the election was stolen. But the fact they werent jeering Vos, he said, was a good sign.

Standing at the back of the convention hall, Blaska said the party is hopefully moving on.

Vos said he wasnt surprised by the reception, citing his relationship with activists dating back to before Act 10, the explosive legislation advanced by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011 that limited public employee collective bargaining rights. Trump, he said, was misinformed.

But in a sign that Trumps supremacy isnt absolute, Vos went further than many other Republican have been willing to, aligning himself with former House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who in a speech last month clashed with Trump when he said, If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or of second-rate imitations, then were not going anywhere.

The things that President Trump stands for a strong America, lower taxes, more freedom everybody agrees with that, Vos said in a brief interview off the convention floor. But I will say I agree with Paul Ryan saying that our movement should never be about one person.

Trump, Vos said, did a lot of good things. But so could [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis or [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio or you name the candidate. They all could do good things, too.

One important distinction in Wisconsin is the state partys history it is more firmly rooted than most. Ten years ago, Wisconsin was the Republican Partys leading light. Ryan was ascendant, soon to become the GOPs vice presidential nominee in 2012, then House speaker. Walker was beginning his first term as governor, waging a war on unions that would serve as a model for conservatives across the country. The states former GOP chair, Reince Priebus, ran the national party.

Today, the state party has been set back. After cresting in 2016, with Trumps upset of Hillary Clinton, Republicans here lost the governorship in 2018, then saw the state flip to Joe Biden two years later. Johnson, the states top elected Republican, has not yet said if hell run for reelection (On Saturday, he told reporters he wont announce a decision for quite some time.)

Its still a place [people] look to, Walker said. But its usually for things that have happened in the past.

Yet a comeback for the GOP in Wisconsin could be just a year away. Trump lost the state by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020. Republicans still control the state legislature, and the party has a credible chance of unseating Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, next year.

I think Wisconsin will be back in terms of being a focal point nationally, because you'll have one of the most competitive gubernatorial elections, and probably at least nationally more importantly, you're going to have a Senate race that could very well determine who holds the Senate for the next several years, Walker said.

He said the party has a tremendous opportunity not to be wed to any one individual, and I say that fully acknowledging that on policy what President Trump did was phenomenal.

On politics, however, his record was mixed. In November, Wisconsin served as a blaring example of Trumps difficulties in the suburbs, with the former president juicing turnout in rural areas but underperforming in metro areas. Convention-goers repeatedly mentioned how Republicans running in the states five Republican-held House seats outperformed Trump in their districts.

In a swing state with a recent history of highly competitive elections, convention delegates and strategists repeatedly cited an imperative to rally together, and also to avoid needlessly alienating large swathes of otherwise attainable voters. Other states, said a Republican strategist at the Wisconsin convention, arent used to a decade of battles where every yard matters and where f---ing with each other internally can cost the party an election.

The stuff thats going on nationally, weve experienced it longer, said Jennie Frederick, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women. I feel like we know who the enemy is, and its not us.

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Trump isnt the dictator: Wisconsin GOP inches away from Trump - POLITICO