Trump wanted to shoot missiles at drug targets in Mexico says ex-Defense Sec. Mark Esper in new book
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says former President Donald Trump considered firing missiles at suspected drug cartel sites in Mexico and that hardline White House aide Stephen Miller wanted to send 250,000 troops to the southern border.
“Shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs,” Esper recalls Trump telling him. “They don’t have control of their own country.”
When Esper objected to the idea of a military attack on one of the closest U.S. allies, Trump suggested trying to keep the U.S. role in the attack secret.
“We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” Trump asserted, apparently unaware that Patriot missiles are defensive weapons used to shoot down incoming missiles. “No one would know it was us.”
The bizarre exchange is the latest shocking revelation about Trump’s behavior in Esper’s forthcoming White House memoir, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times” which hits the shelves on Tuesday.
Trump has not publicly responded as of yet.
Esper, whom Trump abruptly fired immediately after Election Day, says Miller demanded that the Pentagon come up with a plan to send a quarter-million soldiers to the border with Mexico to face down a supposed caravan of thousands of migrants.
“The U.S. armed forces don’t have 250,000 troops to send to the border for such nonsense,” Esper claims he responded to Miller.
“I was just flabbergasted,” Esper told CBS News in a “60 Minutes” interview set to air Sunday.
"We had developed a plan, initial concept of how [sending 250,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border] might happen. And I was just flabbergasted," former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper tells @NorahODonnell.
Mark Esper speaks with 60 Minutes, Sunday. https://t.co/v7prd6Td2D pic.twitter.com/DWXDJ5y2oH— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 5, 2022
It wasn’t the first clash Esper claims he had with the pugnacious hardliner.
Esper says Miller suggested that the U.S. could publicly parade the severed head of terrorist Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in pig’s blood after his 2019 killing as a macabre warning to other Muslim extremists.
The defense chief says he told Miller such a gory act would be an illegal “war crime.” It could also have dramatically inflamed anti-American sentiment across the Islamic world.
Miller denies the al-Baghdadi claim.
Trump wanted troops to open fire on racial justice protesters: Ex-Pentagon chief
Esper also revealed that Trump wanted troops to open fire on racial justice protesters who filled the streets of Washington D.C. in the fractious summer of 2020.
The former secretary of the Army said he explained to Trump that he could not invoke the centuries-old Insurrection Act to justify a violent crackdown on demonstrators even if they were close to the White House.
Esper said the exasperated president derided him as a “loser” along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to go along with his plan.
