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mark esper
Trump Wanted to Shoot Protesters, Says His Former Pentagon Chief
Mark Esper claims in a new book that the former president asked: "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?"
May 02, 2022
Former President Donald Trump suggested protesters in Washington, D.C. denouncing police brutality back in the spring of 2020 should be shot, according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The revelation scooped by Axios Monday comes in Esper's memoir--A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times--to be released May 10.
Referencing the protesters outside the White House the first week of June 2020, Trump asked: "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?"
The moment inside the Oval Office was "surreal," writes Esper, who describes Trump as "red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C."
Esper writes that he wanted to "figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid."
The allegation in Esper's memoir mirrors one laid out last year in then-Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.
"Crack their skulls!" Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials as to how to respond to the June 2020 protesters, according to Bender's book.
"Just shoot them," Trump reportedly said multiple times in the Oval Office, Bender's book charges. Then, after pushback from then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr, Trump said, "Well, shoot them in the leg--or maybe the foot."
At the start of June 2020, Trump publicly threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military to U.S. cities to suppress nationwide demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd.
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," said Trump.
Days later, Esper rebuffed the then-president's call, saying at a Pentagon press briefing that "the option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations."
"We are not in one of those situations now," he said. "I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act."
Five months later, Trump fired Esper, announcing the news in a tweet.
Esper, NPRreported at the time, had "earned the derogatory nickname 'Yesper' for seemingly acquiescing or remaining silent over the president's kneejerk moves. Those ranged from reducing U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Syria with little or no deliberation to stopping Pentagon efforts to rename military bases named after Confederate generals."
The ex-defense chief, however, has rejected the characterization.
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More 'Dictatorship Than a Democracy': Trump Purge at Pentagon Increases Fears of Coup-in-Motion
"The purge happening at the Department of Defense, in the middle of a messy transition, should worry us all."
Nov 10, 2020
Fears that a possible slow-motion coup is in progress in the United States continued to grow on Wednesday, as observers sounded the alarm over President Donald Trump's decision to install "extreme Republican partisans" at the Pentagon after his firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper resulted in resignations by numerous top officials at the department earlier this week.
The stacking of the Pentagon with Trump loyalists--combined with the president's ongoing refusal to accept his electoral defeat and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Tuesday comment that "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration"--has heightened concerns about the Republican Party's authoritarianism and left experts and lawmakers warning that the country is in the midst of an extremely dangerous moment.
The Guardianreported that defense experts believe "there was little the new Trump appointees could do to use their positions to the president's advantage" given that high-ranking military leaders, including General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have vowed to keep the armed forces out of the political process.
Nevertheless, others view this week's personnel changes, which amount to the appointment of pro-Trump officials to key national security roles during the interregnum, as more evidence that Trump intends to use what one current defense official called "dictator moves" to cling to power despite receiving more than five million fewer votes than President-elect Joe Biden, who--based on current results reported by the Associated Press and other outlets--won the Electoral College by a margin of 290 to 217.
"If this is the beginning of a trend--the president either firing or forcing out national security professionals in order to replace them with people perceived as more loyal to him--then the next 70 days will be precarious at best and downright dangerous at worst."
--Rep. Adam Smith
Appearing on CNN Tuesday night, William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense and Republican senator, told network host Don Lemon the president's conduct is "more akin to a dictatorship than a democracy."
"It is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level turnover at the Department of Defense is during a period of presidential transition," wrote Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday.
The development, he said, "should alarm all Americans."
"If this is the beginning of a trend--the president either firing or forcing out national security professionals in order to replace them with people perceived as more loyal to him--then the next 70 days will be precarious at best and downright dangerous at worst," Smith added.
"Defense Secretary Mark Esper... was just the beginning," wrote Spencer Ackerman, senior national security correspondent at The Daily Beast, on Tuesday night. "Also out are Esper's chief of staff Jen Stewart and the Pentagon's top officials for policy and intelligence [James Anderson and Joseph Kernan]."
Ackerman explained that Trump is rushing to fill the recently "purged Pentagon" with "infamous MAGA figures" who are faithful to the president.
Esper was replaced by Chris Miller, previously the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, even though, as Ackerman reported, the "law unambiguously mandates" that David Norquist, the deputy secretary of defense, should have been named acting secretary.
Ackerman reported that Miller's chief of staff is Kash Patel, who--as a senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)--"crafted a dubious memo, denounced by the FBI, to discredit the origins of the investigation into the Trump team's contacts with Russia."
"The new acting undersecretary for policy," Ackerman noted, "is Anthony Tata, who called Barack Obama a 'terrorist leader' in 2018 and claimed Obama is secretly Muslim."
In response to the appointment of Tata, Scott Simpson, public advocacy director at the civil rights organization Muslim Advocates, said in a statement that "every day that he serves as undersecretary of Defense is a day where all Americans are in danger."
Finally, "the top Pentagon official for intelligence is now Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a former National Security Council (NSC) aide to the convicted Mike Flynn."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Cohen-Watnick as a "34 year-old who... advocated for the CIA to orchestrate an overthrow [of] the Iranian regime...[and] was promptly fired from his job as soon as Gen. McMasters took over."
"That Ezra Cohen-Watnick is the acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence would be comical if it weren't so terrifying," a former NSC official in the Trump White House told Ackerman.
Murphy sounded the alarm on Tuesday night, tweeting that "the purge happening at the Department of Defense, in the middle of a messy transition, should worry us all."
\u201cCould be smoke. Could be fire. But the purge happening at the Department of Defense, in the middle of a messy transition, should worry us all. Michael Flynn loyalists and Fox news personalities now populate some of the most important Pentagon posts.\nhttps://t.co/m9y0VaFwIO\u201d— Chris Murphy (@Chris Murphy) 1605060151
"This is the making of a coup," warned author Keith Boykin, pointing not only to Trump's reshuffling of the Pentagon but also to the president's refusal to concede following his election loss as well as the dishonesty and complicity of Pompeo and Attorney General Barr.
The President denies he lost the election.
The Secretary of State lies to the world.
The Attorney General launches a sham investigation.
The Defense Secretary is fired.
Top Pentagon officials are replaced with loyalists.
This is the making of a coup.https://t.co/qpr0o2k1wU
-- Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) November 11, 2020
According toThe Guardian, former defense officials and "military analysts argued that the post-election changes, while highly unusual, were not a reason to fear that the Pentagon would be weaponized in Trump's desperate efforts to hold on to power."
Regardless of whether or not a military coup is on the table, The Daily Poster's David Sirota argued on Tuesday night that Americans ought to be equally concerned by Trump's attempts to stage a judicial coup, which he said has not received sufficient attention from the Democratic Party.
According to Sirota, the president's strategy is to create enough "public perception of fraud" that Republican-dominated legislatures in key states can "try to invoke their constitutional power to ignore their states' popular votes, reject certified election results, and appoint slates of Trump electors."
"Even if the GOP fails to pull this off in 2020, the shit they're pulling right now is a test run of a plan they will use in the future to try to steal a presidential election and end whatever's left of American democracy," Sirota tweeted on Wednesday morning.
"And the next time," he added, "it may work."
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Critics Call Upcoming Pentagon Visit by Indonesian Defense Minister--Accused of Horrific Atrocities--a 'Human Rights Catastrophe'
Prabowo Subianto—who led a notorious commando unit implicated in genocidal violence—was invited to Washington by Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Oct 15, 2020
Human rights advocates this week sounded the alarm on a meeting scheduled for Friday between American Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, a former U.S.-trained general in an elite army unit implicated in genocidal violence and other atrocities in East Timor, West Papua, Jakarta, and elsewhere in the archipelago nation in the late decades of the last century.
Since 2000, Prabowo has been banned from entering the United States by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. However, Esper last week invited the 68-year-old to Washington as the Trump administration seeks closer relations with the nation of 268 million people in a bid to counter China's growing clout.
"Allowing [Prabowo] to freely travel to the U.S. to meet with senior government officials further may violate the Leahy laws and will be catastrophic for human rights in Indonesia."
-- Amnesty International
Human rights groups say lifting the ban on Prabowo is a grave mistake.
Amnesty International on Tuesday sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, signed by numerous rights groups in the U.S. and Indonesia, urging the Trump administration to rescind Prabowo's invitation, arguing the decision to lift the 20-year ban "may violate the Leahy Law and will be catastrophic for human rights."
The Leahy Law--introduced in 1997 by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)--prohibits the State and Defense Departments from providing military assistance to armed forces that commit atrocities with impunity.
On Tuesday, Leahy issued a statement noting that "Prabowo has been credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights, including kidnapping, torture, and disappearances, and under our law he is ineligible to enter this country."
"By granting him a visa, the president and secretary of state have shown once again that for them 'law and order' is an empty slogan that ignores the imperative of justice," said Leahy. "The State Department should apply the law and deny him a visa, and the Pentagon should reaffirm its commitment to the rule of law."
Prabowo joined the elite Kopassus commando unit in 1976, just months after President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger green-lighted a genocidal Indonesian invasion of newly-independent East Timor that would ultimately claim as many as 200,000 lives--around a quarter of the nation's population.
Allegations against the former general--who was trained at Ft. Benning in Georgia--go back to the 1980s, during the long-running armed insurrection against the Indonesian occupation. He allegedly led the massacre of some 300 civilians, including many women and children, as well as the abduction and torture of 23 pro-democracy activists in 1997 and 1998 as the regime of ruling Gen. Suharto--who rose to power during U.S.-backed genocidal violence in the mid-1960s--collapsed.
\u201cETAN condemns visa to Indonesia's Defense Minister Prabowo, labels him a "serial rights violator" not worthy of U.S. visit\n\n#NoPrabowoVisa #BanPrabowo #Indonesia\n https://t.co/AOoYhLMzXF\u201d— ETAN (@ETAN) 1602526687
Prabowo is also accused of orchestrating the worst atrocity of the period immediately preceding Suharto's fall. Kopassus troops under his command allegedly led the mass rape and murder of at least 160 Chinese-Indonesian women and girls, many of whom were reportedly burned to death after being sexually assaulted, and the murder of hundreds of other Indonesians of Chinese origin.
The Clinton administration cut ties with Kopassus in 1999. However, in 2010 the Obama administration, citing the unit's improved human rights record under a democratic Indonesian government, resumed cooperation. This, despite reports that Kopassus was still committing atrocities, this time against Christians in independence-minded West Papua.
Amnesty International's letter called on Pompeo to "clarify that the visa issued to... Prabowo does not extend any form of immunity to him, and to ensure that if he does travel to the U.S., he is properly and promptly investigated, and if there is sufficient evidence, brought to trial for his alleged responsibility for crimes under international law."
\u201cPrediction:\n-This meeting will lead to termination of most (maybe all) restrictions on US cooperation with KOPASSUS (#Indonesia's Special Forces, long sanctioned, separately from Prabowo, for #HumanRights violations).\n-Due to timing: Nobody in the US will notice.\u201d— Jonah Blank (@Jonah Blank) 1602741021
Experts, however, said it was highly unlikely that the U.S.--which has supported nearly every right-wing dictatorship since the end of World War II as well as genocidal regimes in Indonesia, Pakistan, Guatemala, Iraq, and Rwanda--would take legal action against Prabowo, as required under domestic and international law.
"It's likely that [Prabowo] has diplomatic immunity and therefore can't be charged with a crime or can't be arrested while he's in the U.S.," Ilya Somin, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in Virginia, toldVoice of America.
"I think this visit's really been choreographed at the highest levels and the minister is going to be greeted with great respect in Washington," added Brian Harding a former Pentagon official now with the U.S. Institute of Peace.
A 2010 proclamation by President Barack Obama also banned human rights violators from entering the United States, although the order has rarely been enforced and--like other U.S. human rights meausres including the Child Soldiers Prevention Act--allows for "national interest" exceptions.
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