Donald Trump has fired back at Mark Esper who made a series of revelations about the former president, including the claim that he considered deploying the military in Washington DC and firing missiles in Mexico to destroy drug cartels.
The former president, however, denied Mr Esper’s claims that he wanted to deploy 10,000 active duty military forces in Washington’s streets after a fire at the historic St John’s Episcopal Church during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests on 31 May 2020.
He told CBS’s 60 Minutes that he instead wanted to send 10,000 active duty troops ahead of the 6 January Capitol riot last year and accused Nancy Pelosi and Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser of not allowing proper security to avoid riots on that day.
“Wrong. I wanted to send at least 10,000 troops for January 6, because I knew many people were coming to Washington that day to protest the corrupt Presidential Election of 2020,” Mr Trump said in response to CBS’s questions.
“Nancy Pelosi and the DC Mayor turned me down.”
He said the broadcaster should ask the US House of Representatives speaker and Ms Bowser why they chose to “not have proper security, which would have totally changed that day”.
Former defence secretary Mr Esper, who first made the revelations in his upcoming book A Sacred Oath, recounted how he prevented several “dangerous things that could have taken the country in a dark direction” in an interview to 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Mr Esper said he thought Mr Trump would give him a “direct order to deploy paratroopers into the streets of Washington, DC” during the 31 May protest when the blaze broke out.
“And I’m thinking with weapons and bayonets. This would be horrible,” he recounted.
He alleged Mr Trump used foul language in the room where Mike Pence was also present.
“‘Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something.’ And he’s suggesting that that’s what we should do, that we should bring in the troops and shoot the protesters,” Mr Esper said, recounting the claims he made in his book.
The former president responded to the allegations by saying they were a “complete lie” and that he and he would have “10 witnesses” to back this up.
“Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective, and because of it, I had to run the military. I took out ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, al Baghdadi, rebuilt the military with $2.5 trillion, created Space Force, and so much more. Mark Esper was a stiff who was desperate not to lose his job,” Mr Trump said.
“He would do anything I wanted, that’s why I called him ‘Yesper.’ He was a lightweight and figurehead, and I realised it very early on,” he added.
In the series of revelations, Mr Esper also claimed Mr Trump was looking into the possibility of secretly launching missiles into Mexico to “go after the cartels” in a private conversation.
To the “60 minutes” question about the alleged remarks, Mr Trump said “no comments”.
