Braxton Taylor
Pentagon officials are not offering any explanation as to why they removed the portrait of Gen. Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, on Monday shortly after President Donald Trump was inaugurated.
The portrait of Milley hung in an ornate hallway that is dedicated to the history of the Joint Chiefs and displays 19 other paintings of all other prior chairmen going back to Gen. Omar Bradley. Milley’s portrait, the latest addition in the historic line, was unveiled Jan. 10.
By 2 p.m. Monday, the day of Trump’s inauguration, reporters inside the Pentagon noticed that the portrait had been removed from the wall. On Tuesday, reporters observed workers patching the holes and repainting the wall where the portrait had hung.
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A spokesman for the current chairman, Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, directed Military.com’s questions on the removal to the office of the secretary of defense and the White House.
The secretary’s office simply said “no comment,” while the White House did not respond to the query in time for publication.
While an official explanation for the removal of the portrait that had hung in the Pentagon for less than two weeks was not offered by defense officials, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told a group of reporters Tuesday that Trump ordered that the painting be removed.
“I guess he’s OK with rewriting history,” Kaine said in a video posted by reporter Joe Khalil to social media.
Milley served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs — a position that is largely responsible for being the president’s top military adviser — between 2019 and 2023 and advised Trump for the last two years of his first term in office. Before that, Milley had been the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Army.
While Milley’s tenure was rocky and he was condemned by both Republicans and Democrats at various times, the biggest rift between the Army general and Trump came after the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the days after the insurrection, Milley made two calls to a Chinese general, Li Zuocheng. “My task at that time was to deescalate,” Milley told senators that year, and explained that he was hoping to calm fears in the Chinese top brass that the U.S. might attack China amid the chaos and turmoil of a transition that was being rocked by violence.
Milley was “certain” that the former president “did not intend on attacking the Chinese, and it is my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent,” he said.
Amid his reelection campaign in 2023, Trump claimed Milley would have faced death “in times gone by” for the call and that his retirement was a “time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate!”
Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, one of the key architects of Trump’s immigration policies during his first term, claimed that Milley “was a traitor to President Trump who lied to see his name in print and be elevated as a hero to the liberal media” in a social media post the day the portrait was unveiled.
The massive military headquarters that sits on the bank of the Potomac River not only displays portraits of the military and civilian heads of the services but also the former secretaries of defense and war.
Milley’s portrait was part of that tradition, and it was made possible because of a donation to the Army by the “Association of the United States Army” — a nonprofit organization that acts as an outside advocacy organization for the service.
“For at least the last 30 years, we have paid for the portraits of the outgoing chiefs of staff of the Army and secretaries of the Army — and outgoing chairman when he is an Army general officer — through a gift proffer,” Tom McCuin, a spokesman for the group, told Military.com in an email Tuesday.
“We donate the money to the Army, which the Army then uses to pay the artist,” he added, before noting that the finished portraits are property of the Department of the Army or, in the case of the chairman, the Department of Defense.
Milley’s portrait from his time as the Army chief of staff was still hanging among his fellow Army chiefs at the time of publication.
In both his Army and chairman portraits, Milley is depicted in a service uniform and included somewhere in the works is a Constitution of the United States, a Princeton University seal, and a photo of his family.
In his chairman’s portrait, Milley also had the artist include a battle map of Ukraine lying on a table, among other details.
Pentagon officials wouldn’t say where the portrait was taken.
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