New book details how Trump proposed hitting Mexico with missiles
3 Min Read
The memoir from the ex-defense chief Mark Esper details Trump's furious outbursts at former VP Mike Pence as well.
After being rebuffed in his wish for a violent crackdown on racial justice protestors in the summer of 2020, Donald Trump included his vice-president Mark Pence in a complaint that top advisers were "losers."
Mark Esper, Trump's second defense secretary, describes the Oval Office tantrum in a new book - A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times. The Guardian obtained an early copy, due to be released next week, and reported on the findings.
Esper previously recounted how Trump wanted police to shoot protestors around the White House demonstrating the death of George Floyd.
According to Axios, Trump allegedly told Esper in June 2020: "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?"
Read more: How many times has Trump encouraged violence?
Among Trump's outrageous suggestions was launching missiles into Mexico "to destroy drug labs."
Trump, according to Esper, stated that "no one would know it was us" because he would just deny responsibility. Esper claimed he would have assumed Trump was kidding if he hadn't been looking at the president at the time.
Esper says that he assisted in the defeat of other such suggestions from the president and his advisers, including requests from policy adviser Stephen Miller that the US send 250,000 troops to the border with Mexico.
Miller also alleged suggesting that the head of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, an Islamic State commander slain by the US, be severed, dipped in pig's blood, and paraded as a warning to future terrorists.
According to the New York Times, Miller denied the event and called Esper "a moron."
The former defense secretary's detailed description of the meeting at which Trump recommended shooting protestors, as Washington and other US cities were shaken by riots sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in late May 2020, is as extraordinary.
Esper's account of Gen. Mark Milley's attempts to explain the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Trump echoes others, including those written by reporter Michael Bender in a book published last year and William Barr, Trump's second attorney general, who was present but recounts a slightly different lineup of Trump aides.
Esper does not mince words when describing how he believes Trump responded when told Milley had no command authority over active military or national guard personnel Trump sought to send.
“‘You are losers!’ the president protested. ‘You are all f***ing losers!’
Esper elaborates on Barr's version of what the then-attorney general referred to as a "tantrum," claiming that Pence was also a target.
“He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden. I never saw him yell at the vice-president before, so this really caught my attention.”
According to Esper, Trump "was waiting, it seemed, for one of us to yield and simply agree. That wasn't going to happen."
