Donald Trump inquired in 2020 regarding the possibility of bombing drug trafficking laboratories in Mexico with his Secretary of Defense, Mark T. Esper, reports the latter in a book which will be published on May 10.
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According to extracts from the book quoted by the New York Times, the US president believed at the time that the United States might claim not to be behind such a missile strike on Mexican soil, says Mr. Esper, who was Secretary of Defense to Donald Trump between July 2019 and November 2020.
The ex-White House tenant reportedly asked twice if the armed forces might “fire missiles at Mexico to destroy the drug labs”, writes Mark T. Esper in his memoir entitled A Sacred Oath (A sacred oath), claiming that Donald Trump’s statements left him speechless.
Donald Trump had decided to dismiss Mark T. Esper in November 2020, a few days following the announcement of the results of the American presidential election.
Relations between the fiery septuagenarian president and his secretary of defense had been strained since the head of the Pentagon had publicly opposed a few months earlier the deployment of the army to suppress anti-racist demonstrations in the country.
In other excerpts from his memoirs, Mark T. Esper writes that on the sidelines of these demonstrations in June 2020, the very irate president allegedly shouted into the Oval Office: “Can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something.”
