This is a book that will likely infuriate former US President Donald Trump (2016-2020). In his memoirs entitled A Sacred Oath (“A sacred oath”), which will be published this Tuesday, May 10, the former Minister of Defense – between July 2019 and November 2020 – Mark Esper recounts in particular that Donald Trump had considered bombing the laboratories of drug traffickers in Mexico, in 2020.
Mark Esper reports that the former American president would have asked twice if the armed forces could “fire missiles on Mexico to destroy the drug labs”, according to extracts quoted by the New York Times. The American president believed at the time that the United States could have claimed not to be at the origin of such a missile strike on Mexican soil. Mark Esper was left speechless after Donald Trump’s statements.
“Can’t you just shoot them?”
Also according to the former Minister of Defense, Donald Trump has also issued another radical solution to finish with anti-racist demonstrators this time, as reported Axios, who obtained excerpts from the book. “Can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something,” he reportedly said in June 2020 in the Oval Office, as protesters gathered around the White House during anti-racism protests. The death on May 25, 2020 of the African-American George Floyd, killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, in the north of the United States, had indeed caused a wave of indignation and demonstrations.
“The good news: it was not a difficult decision” not to follow the idea launched by the Republican president, says Mark Esper. “The bad: I had to get Donald Trump to back down without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”
Donald Trump had decided to dismiss Mark Esper in November 2020, a few days after the announcement of the results of the American presidential election. It was the monster protests in the spring of 2020, after the death of George Floyd, that precipitated the loss of Mark Esper. The latter had first given pledges to the Republican President by prepositioning military reinforcements near Washington. He spoke of the streets of the federal capital as a “battlefield” and appeared to Donald Trump when he was photographed in front of a church after the brutal dispersal of a demonstration near the White House.
“Crush their skulls!”
But within the American army, considered as a social elevator and where minorities are largely represented, the incident caused unease. Several high-ranking black officers have publicly expressed support for the protesters.
Two days later, the head of the Pentagon defused the crisis by publicly opposing the deployment of the army to suppress the demonstrations. “I am not in favor of decreeing a state of insurrection,” he declared, referring to the only decree that would legally allow the president to deploy active soldiers against American citizens, and no longer reservists from the National Guard. The divorce with Donald Trump was then consummated.
In a book published in August 2021, titled Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost (“Honestly, We Won This Election: How Trump Lost”) Journalist Michael Bender had previously reported that the American billionaire had repeatedly exclaimed, “Shoot them”, on the sidelines of these same anti-racism rallies. In front of images of repression of the demonstrators, Donald Trump would also have launched: “This is how you must take care of these people. Smash their skulls!”