Friday, Jan. 7, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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A congressional candidate says during a recorded interview that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed on live TV.
No, this wasn’t someone running in Texas or Georgia. It was Noah Malgeri, a U.S. Army veteran who is seeking the 3rd District congressional seat right here in Southern Nevada. Nevada voters should remember his name, because he has revealed himself as being a face of dangerous Republican extremism.
Appearing the day after Christmas in an interview with the Las Vegas right-wing group Veterans in Politics International, Malgeri called for Gen. Mark Milley to be court-martialed and, if found guilty, put to death. The comment related to GOP accusations that Milley committed treason for allegedly reassuring his counterpart in China that the U.S. would not attack China in the months after Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 election.
“We need to get back to our patriotic, liberty-loving roots,” Malgeri said. “What did they used to do to traitors if they were convicted by a court? They would execute them. That’s still the law in the United States of America. I think, you know, if he’s guilty of it by a court-martial, they should hang him on CNN. I mean, they’re not going to do it on CNN. But on C-SPAN or something.”
This is the depth the GOP has hit: A comment that once would have been shocking even coming from a candidate from the radical fringe is now being made by a man who — on paper, anyway — wouldn’t necessarily raise any red flags.
Malgeri is a businessman, an attorney and a U.S. Army veteran in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A native of Massachusetts, with degrees in mechanical engineering from Boston University and law from George Washington University, he came to Las Vegas in the mid-2010s to serve as director of the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada’s pro bono project.
After serving for several years in that role, he now runs a small company that makes roof racks for vehicles.
Yet here he was, openly calling for America’s top general to be hanged before a live TV audience.
In the same interview, he also contended that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was lab-engineered as part of a global plot “to destroy America and impose a totalitarian, authoritarian regime globally.”
With his comment on Milley, Malgeri was promoting a false GOP narrative that the calls were conducted in secret and that Milley acted on his own. Those accusations prompted numerous individuals who were familiar with the situation to rush to Milley’s defense, saying he had cleared the calls through Defense Department leaders and briefed other agencies on them. Milley, during an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was acting on instructions from top aides in the Trump administration to de-escalate tensions after receiving information from U.S. intelligence that Beijing feared that Trump would launch an attack after his loss. Several current and former Defense officials have confirmed that account.
Yet Milley and other top Armed Services leaders have become targets for GOP extremist leadership and followers like Malgeri, who portray them as being part of a leftist, elitist group that attempted to stage a coup against Trump.
Malgeri and those who share his perspective shouldn’t be anywhere near Congress.
Instead, Malgeri’s military background and extremist views bring to mind the type of individual that three retired Army officers warned Americans about in a recent guest column in The Washington Post, where they discussed being “chilled to our bones” by the possibility of a successful military coup following the 2024 presidential election.
“One of our military’s strengths is that it draws from our diverse population,” wrote Army veterans Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba and Steven M. Anderson. “It is a collection of individuals, all with different beliefs and backgrounds. But without constant maintenance, the potential for a military breakdown mirroring societal or political breakdown is very real.”
Malgeri’s comments provide another reminder that reasonable, responsible voters must go to the polls this year and keep extremists like him away from the levers of power.
Moderate voters must be appalled by what they’re seeing in the Republican Party — the unhinged rhetoric, the increasing embrace of violent white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the attacks on the military and other institutions, and so on. But complaining isn’t enough. Voters must turn out and defend the nation’s democracy from the GOP, which is resembling a political party less and less, and an armed insurrection more and more.
