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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Nathan Place

New book says Trump wanted troops to open fire on BLM protesters: ‘Can’t you just shoot them?’

Donald Trump Mark Esper Michael Bender George Floyd
AFP via Getty Images

As Black Lives Matter protesters swarmed outside the White House in 2020, then-president Donald Trump reportedly proposed a solution: “Just shoot them.”

That’s according to Mr Trump’s secretary of defense at the time, Mark Esper, in his upcoming memoir, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, which comes out on 10 May.

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