Former United States President Donald Trump twice considered launching missiles against drug laboratories in Mexico clandestinely, says former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
in his memories "A Sacred Oath" (A sacred oath, not yet translated into Spanish), which will appear next Tuesday, Esper relates that Trump raised this possibility with him in 2020 to "destroy drug labs" in an operation that should have been secret, according to a preview published this Thursday by the New York Times.
Esper, who served from July 2019 to November 2020 – when he was fired by Trump for allegedly refusing to deploy troops against Black Lives Matter protesters – openly says that Trump "he is an unprincipled person who, given his personal interests, should not be in public office".
In reference to Mexico, he recalls that Trump told him on two occasions, one of them in the summer of 2020, that Mexicans "they have no control of their own country" and added: "We could fire several Patriot missiles and eliminate those laboratories, without noise (…) Nobody would know that it was us"he told him, adding that he would not have taken the comment seriously except that he was looking the president in the eye.
During the riots caused by police violence that gave rise to Black Lives Matter, Trump even suggested: "Can’t you just shoot them?" (to the protesters).
Another of the suggestions that Esper claims to have stopped was the one he made after the bombing that killed the head of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al Baghadi: Trump proposed cutting Al Baghdadi’s head, dipping it in pig’s blood and displaying it to dissuade to other terrorists; Esper replied that this would amount to a war crime.
The former minister says he weighed the idea of ​​resigning on several occasions, but stayed because he saw that Trump was surrounded by sycophants whispering dangerous ideas to him, and by staying in office he ensured that all such suggestions were not carried out. what qualifies you as "an act of service".