Trump also proposed to Esper to “just shoot” protesters, enraged by police brutality following the murder of African-American George Floyd. The revelation was made by his former Defense Minister Mark T. Esper during an interview for The New York Times where he discussed his forthcoming book, “A Sacred Oath”.
In his book, “A Sacred Oath,” Esper calls Trump “an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not hold a public service position.”
In the book, which will be published next Tuesday, he explained that Trump’s proposal came in the summer of 2020. The then president was not happy with the constant flow of drugs from Mexican cartels through the southern border of the United States. . Esper claims Trump asked him at least twice if the military could “fire missiles at Mexico to destroy drug labs,” and accused Mexican authorities of not being “in control of their own country.”
Alarmed, Esper raised several objections to the plan, but Trump insisted. “We could just fire some Patriot missiles and blow up the labs, quietly.” According to the president, “nobody would know it was us.” He even said that if anyone asked, he would simply say that the United States had not led the attack. Esper recalls that he would have thought it was a joke if he hadn’t been looking Trump in the face.
The Times said it asked a Trump spokesman, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Esper, whom Trump fired after the defense secretary did not support the invocation of the Insurrection Act by the president, who wanted to deploy the army in the streets during the height of the anti-racism protests. At the time, Trump also proposed to Esper to “just shoot” protesters, enraged by police brutality following the murder of African-American George Floyd.
Esper says he has considered resigning several times, but he did not do so because there was no one who would tell Trump the truth; On the contrary, he details, there were people who whispered “dangerous ideas” to him. And he thought it was his duty to make sure those things didn’t happen. Like the proposal to launch missiles.
According to Esper’s account, Trump was emboldened after overcoming, in 2020, the impeachment against him for his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his rival, Joe Biden, current president of the United States. From there, says the former Secretary of Defense, Trump tried to reinforce his control over the Executive branch with demands for personal loyalty.
Trump claims to have “bent” the government of Mexico
Just a few weeks ago, Trump sparked controversy when he claimed to have “bent” the Mexican government, forcing it to agree to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the border to prevent the passage of migrants, under the threat that he would impose tariffs.
Last February, Trump opined that the United States should emulate Russia and send a peacekeeping force to the country’s southern border. “How smart is that?” he said, about sending Russian troops to the Ukrainian border shortly before the start of the invasion. “He [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is going to go into Ukraine and be a peacemaker. That is the strongest peacekeeping force… We could use that on our southern border.”
During his administration, Trump also threatened to designate drug cartels as “terrorists.” He even said that he had offered the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “to let us go in and clean, and so far he has rejected the offer. But at some point, it has to be done.”
The warning caused a stir in Mexico, given the possibility that, declared terrorists, United States forces could launch operations on Mexican soil to capture the cartel bosses.
“Mexico will never admit any action that implies a violation of its national sovereignty. We will act firmly,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said at the time.