In a more than 400-word statement issued from his post-presidential office, Trump denied that he had ever “threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government,” calling the notion “So ridiculous!” “Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of ‘coup,’” Trump said, “and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.”... “To me,” Trump said, “the fact that Mattis didn’t like him, just like Obama didn’t like him and actually fired Milley, was a good thing, not a bad thing. I often act counter to people’s advice who I don’t respect.” Trump’s statement that former President Barack Obama fired Milley is incorrect. It was Mattis whom Obama fired as head of U.S. Central Command in 2013, in large part because of Mattis’ increasingly hawkish posture toward Iran.