Following Trump’s photo op on June 1, 2020 at St. John’s Church in Lafayette Square, with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley reaiized the error of his participating in the venture.

Soon enough, Milley recognized the error of his decision and apologized, saying, “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

A week later, he prepared a letter to the president resigning his post. This was not written by a resigning Secretary of State who called Trump a “moron,” or a leaving Chief of Staff castigating Trump for calling those who died in the military serving our nation “suckers” and “losers.” This was a letter from the highest ranking military officer in the United States to the Commander in Chief. This is the letter in full.

I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.

After preparing the letter, he changed his mind.

Milley reportedly decided to fight his battle from inside the government, allegedly saying, “If they want to court-martial me, or put me in prison, have at it. But I will fight from the inside.”

The letter was never sent. Perhaps it was written in anger and, in a cooler light, he decided it was too harsh or did not reflect his beliefs. But perhaps he meant what he said, both in the letter and in his reason for not sending it.

Trump didn’t serve in the military. Trump has expressed his utter contempt for those who did. It’s not just that he’s “smarter than the generals,” which is bizarre enough, but that his grasp of reality is so base and transactional that he couldn’t understand why anyone would serve, would give his life for this nation for altruistic purposes. There was “nothing in it for them,”

From Trump’s singularly self-aggrandizing perspective, that was true. It wasn’t even worth getting his hair wet by visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau. Milley did not subscribe to that view. John Kelly went in his stead. Kelly, like Milley, was a general before serving, and quitting, as Trump’s Chief of Staff.

Then again, so was Lt. General Michael Flynn, convicted by plea, later withdrawn, of lying to the FBI about his connection to the Russian ambassador. Flynn, who received tens of thousand of dollars from Russia, was pardoned by Trump. He never wrote Trump a letter of resignation.