The former Pentagon chief said in his book that Donald Trump asked him about the possibility of launching missiles on Mexican territory to “destroy the drug labs,” according to The New York Times.
The former president was said to be concerned with the continuing drug trafficking into the country.
“They don’t have control of their own country,” Trump said, according to Esper’s book.
Responding to the defense secretary’s objections, ex-POTUS reportedly insisted that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that “no one would know it was us.” The former president, according to Esper, suggested simply refuting any potential accusations related to the attacks.
The former defense secretary wrote that he would have thought it was a joke had he not been staring Mr. Trump in the face, according to the New York Times.
Esper said Trump “seemed more emboldened, and more erratic, after he was acquitted in his first impeachment trial” and he “tried to tighten his grip on the executive branch with demands of personal loyalty.”
Esper also wrote in his new book that Trump spoke about the idea of opening fire on protesters who took to the streets around the White House following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, proposing to deploy 10,000 active-duty troops.
“Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump reportedly asked.
The former defense secretary states that he never believed Trump's decisions merited invoking the 25th Amendment, but says the former president was “someone not in control of his emotions or his thought process throughout 2020.”
Earlier, Esper accused Pentagon officials of unreasonably banning much of his upcoming memoir from his “turbulent tenure” under U.S. President Donald Trump. He filed a lawsuit last year against the Defense Department, demanding the withheld extracts be published, as they are “crucial to telling important stories discussed in the manuscript.”