General Mark Milley stepped down as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Friday after decades of military service, but not without taking an apparent parting shot at his former boss Donald Trump.

During his farewell speech, Milley said, “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

In deranged posts on Truth Social that raised alarm in Washington D.C. this week, Trump accused Milley of treason and suggested he would’ve been executed for his actions “in times gone by.” One of those actions was a phone call Milley had with his Chinese counterpart. Former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper explained on CNN this week that he called China first, then instructed Milley to follow suit.

And it was in a separate meeting that I directed General Milley to to reach out to his counterpart as well, to send the same message that, ‘Nothing going on here. We have no aims against you, that it’s going to be steady as she goes,’ and that’s what we did typically in these types of situations.

He conveyed that message. But somehow it got portrayed that he was a rogue general acting on his own, and sent wrong messages to the Chinese. And again, it’s an incomplete story. Mark Milley did what I directed him to do, he did what other chairmen had done in the past, which, I think is responsible diplomacy and statecraft to prevent mishaps from happening.

CNN’s Br1anna Keilar noted Friday that Milley “may have the distinction of being the first chairman of the joint chiefs seen off with violent threats from a former commander in chief.”

Milley told 60 Minutes in a new interview that he has taken security measures to protect himself and his family.

“As much as these comments are directed at me, it’s directed at the institution of the military. And there are 2.1 million of us in uniform. The American people can take it to the bank that all of us, every one of us from private to general, are loyal to that Constitution and we’ll never turn our back on it no matter the threats, the humiliation, no matter what,” Milley said.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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