Trump's Defense Secretary Claims He Asked About Shooting Protesters, Firing Missiles on Mexico

Alex Wong/Getty; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Defense Secretary Mark Esper (left) and President Donald Trump

Among the many revelations from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's forthcoming memoir, A Sacred Oath, are a slew of claims concerning former President Donald Trump.

Among them, according to various excerpts and reports on the book, is that Trump once proposed launching missiles into Mexico and that he questioned why those protesting in the wake of George Floyd's murder couldn't be shot in the legs.

Esper, who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election, made headlines back in June 2020, when he split with the then-president over invoking the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed the former president to send the military into states in response to protests and unrest.

Trump had threatened earlier that, if the turmoil wasn't quelled around the country to his satisfaction, he would send the military into states. Behind the scenes, Esper alleges in his new book, Trump had other ideas about how to stop the protests.

"Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?" Trump said, according to Esper's book, which was excerpted by Axios. (Spokespeople for Trump did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.)

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Esper also details a moment when Trump asked about deploying active duty or national guard forces to quell protests, and was told Gen. Mark Milley had no command authority over the forces.

According to Esper, Trump was angered by the response, lashing out at Milley, Esper and then-Attorney General Bill Barr.

"You are losers!" Trump yelled, per an excerpt of the book highlighted by The Guardian. "You are all f------ losers!"

Esper writes: "This wasn't the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward Barr, Milley and me."

"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."

Elsewhere in the book, The New York Times reports that Esper claims Trump asked him at least twice whether the military could "shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs."

When Esper objected to the idea, he writes that Trump said, "we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly," and "no one would know it was us."

Esper adds that he "had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid."

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While Esper writes that he never believed Trump's conduct was so poor as to invoke the 25th Amendment, under which the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office. But Esper claims not everyone felt the same.

The Times reports that Esper recounts a May 2020 meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Trump's behavior led one officer to later confide that he had researched the 25th Amendment

Trump isn't the only person whose past behaviors are recounted in the book. Esper also writes about instances involving Trump's controversial policy adviser Stephen Miller, who he claims once proposed sending 250,000 troops to the southern border to circumvent a large group of migrants.

"The U.S. armed forces don't have 250,000 troops to send to the border for such nonsense," Esper said he responded, per the Times.

After the raid that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, Esper writes that Miller proposed securing al-Baghdadi's head, "dipping it in pig's blood and parading it around to warn other terrorists," the Times reports. (Miller, disputing the allegations, called Esper, "a moron" in response to the Times.)

Axios reports that the book, due out on Tuesday, "was reviewed in whole or in part by nearly three dozen 4-star generals, senior civilians, and some Cabinet members."