According to excerpts from the book cited by the New York Times, the American president believed at the time that the United States might claim not to be at the origin of such a missile strike on Mexican soil, affirms M Esper, who served as Donald Trump’s defense minister between July 2019 and November 2020.
The former White House tenant allegedly asked twice if the armed forces might “fire missiles at Mexico to destroy the drug labs”, writes Mark Esper in his memoir, “A Sacred Oath”. ), claiming that Donald Trump’s statements had left him speechless.
Donald Trump had decided to dismiss Mark 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 minister 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 Esper writes that on the sidelines of these demonstrations in June 2020, the president, very irritated, would have launched into the Oval Office: “You can’t just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something.”