Former United States President Donald Trump twice considered launching missiles against drug laboratories in Mexico clandestinely, without acknowledging that the attack was American, according to what former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper reveals in his memoirs.
In the book, titled A Sacred Oath (A sacred oath), which will appear next Tuesday, Esper recounts that Trump raised this possibility with him in 2020 to “destroy drug laboratories” in an operation that should have been secret, according to a preview of the memoirs published this Thursday by the New York Times.
In reference to Mexico, he recalls that Trump told him on two occasions, one of them in the summer of 2020, that Mexicans “have no control of their own country” and added: “We could fire several Patriot missiles and eliminate those laboratories, without noise (…) No one would know it was us, “he told him, adding that he would not have taken the comment seriously except because he was looking the president in the eye.
Esper served from July 2019 to November 2020, when he was fired by Trump for allegedly refusing to deploy soldiers against Black Lives Matter protesters. In his book he openly says that Trump “is an unprincipled person who, given his personal interests, should not be in public office.”
Shoot the protesters
During the riots caused by police violence that gave rise to Black Lives Matter, Trump suggested to him: “Can’t you just shoot them? [a los manifestantes]?” Esper explains in his book, according to the New York Times.
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Another of the suggestions that Esper claims to have stopped was the one he made after the bombing that killed the head of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al Baghadi: Trump proposed cutting Al Baghdadi’s head, dipping it in pig’s blood and displaying it to dissuade to other terrorists; Esper replied that this would amount to a war crime.
The former defense secretary, equivalent to a minister, says he weighed the idea of resigning on several occasions, but that he stayed because he saw that Trump was surrounded by sycophants who whispered dangerous ideas to him, and by staying in office he could prevent those proposals. were carried out, which he qualifies for his part as “an act of service”.
In his memoir, Esper also notes that he also viewed Mark Meadows, the last White House chief of staff under President Trump, as a big problem for the administration and the national security team in particular. He also recounts repeated clashes with Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser over the past year, portraying him as advocating a bellicose approach to Iran without regard for possible consequences.
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