60 Minutes Tonight-Mark Esper Takes Down Trump

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

5-5-3033

Experts weigh in on shocking Trump revelations
from Mark Esper.

Trump-era Secretary of Defense Mark Esper received harsh criticism on Thursday after The New York Times published a
story with quotes from his forthcoming book.

"Former President Donald J. Trump asked Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary, about the possibility
of launching missiles into Mexico to 'destroy the drug labs' and wipe out the cartels, maintaining that the United States’ involvement in a strike against its southern neighbor could be kept secret, Mr. Esper recounts in his upcoming memoir," Maggie Haberman reported for The New York Times. "Those remarkable discussions in 2020 were among several moments that Mr. Esper described in the book, A Sacred Oath, as leaving him all but speechless when he served the 45th president."

Esper, who was fired by tweet in November of 2020, reports Trump wanted to fire Patriot missiles into Mexico.

"Mr. Esper, the last Senate-confirmed defense secretary under Mr. Trump, also had concerns about speculation that the president might misuse the military around Election Day by, for instance, having soldiers seize ballot boxes," the newspaper reported.

"Mr. Esper writes that he never believed Mr. Trump’s conduct rose to the level of needing to invoke the 25th Amendment. He also strains to give Mr. Trump credit where he thinks he deserves it. Nonetheless, Mr. Esper paints a portrait of someone not in control of his emotions or his thought process throughout 2020."

Esper, a former chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation and Raytheon lobbyist, received harsh criticism for not warning America sooner, among other complaints.
Here's some of what people were saying:

"Thank goodness for a robust publishing industry that lets us hear of these grave risks to the republic years after they happened," Georgia State Law Prof. Jeffrey Vagle posted on Twitter.

U.S. Naval War College Prof. Tom Nichols wrote, "Your reminder that Mark Esper should have told everything he knew to Congress and the American people a lot goddamned sooner than this."

"Another Trump appointee warns 'he is an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service.' But Republicans don’t care," conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot posted.

Retired 3-star Gen. Mark Hertling noted a problem with Trump's plans to use Patriot missiles.

"Launching 'Patriot' missiles (an air defense missile, ground-to-air) against a ground target, and thinking no one will know. Stable genius material," he wrote.

"Why are we hearing about this two years later"
Rep. Don Breyer (D-VA) asked. "As with so many revelations about awful things Trump did or tried
to do, this is something Congress and the country should have known about long ago.

Politico reporter Max Tani said Trump's scheme was "basically the plot" of the 1989 Tom Clancy book
Clear and Present Danger, which was adapted into the 1994 movie starring Harrison Ford.

"We had developed a plan, initial concept of how [sending 250,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border] might happen.
And I was just flabbergasted," former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper tells Norah ODonnell.
Mark Esper speaks with 60 Minutes, Sunday.

Taking out the Mexican cartels would be easy, all you'd have to do is reduce every government building to rubble.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

5-8-2022

(((just watched 60 minutes--it was explosive---))

Trump rants at Mark Esper and '60 Minutes' — then says 'no comment' about whether he wanted to bomb Mexico.

Ahead of the public release of Mark Esper's book,
"60 Minutes" did an interview with the former Secretary of Defense. As part of the interview, co-host Norah O'Donnell reached out to former President Donald Trump for comment, and the replies went into detail contrasting Esper's account.

It was the final question that was the most interesting. Esper has said that Trump wanted to ask why he couldn't bomb Mexico to deal with the drug cartels.

"Is that supposed to be a bad thing," the president's namesake Donald Trump Jr. tweeted this week when the news broke.

While Trump is eager to lend his comments about any topic, on this one, he was mum.

"No comment," the president said.

Another issue Trump took with Esper's comments was his accusation that Trump wanted to deploy 10,000 troops into Washington, D.C. to respond to the Black Lives Matter protests.

"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 (sic) of 2020," Trump claimed.

This contrasts with all testimony given under oath to the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6.
For that reason, the Washington Post gave it "four Pinocchios."

"But it turns out a Vanity Fair reporter was embedded with acting defense secretary Christopher Miller and his top aides during the period leading up to the insurrection," the fact-check explained. "That real-time access provided a different version than the account offered by Trump and his former chief of staff."

"We’re like, 'We’re going to provide any National Guard support that the District requests,'" Miller said, according to the Vanity Fair report. "And [Trump] goes, 'You’re going to need 10,000 people.' No, I’m not talking bullsh--. He said that. And we’re like, 'Maybe. But you know, someone’s going to have to ask for it.'"

The number Trump threw out was part of his hyperbolic estimations like "there's going to be
a million people."

((watch 60 minutes tonight if possible, yup))))

Trump slams Esper as ‘lightweight’ in response to 60 Minutes interview
Monique Beals | TheHill
Sun, May 8, 2022, 7:47 PM

Former President Trump called his former defense secretary a “lightweight” and a “RINO” in response to a “60 Minutes” interview that covered a series of shocking claims about the former commander-in-chief.

Former Pentagon Mark Esper is releasing a book about his time in the Trump administration this week, and in early excerpts accuses the former president of wanting to shoot racial justice protestors in the legs and fire missiles into Mexico to crush cartels.

In response to CBS’ questions about the interview, Trump disputed those allegations and others, accusing Esper of being a failure as defense secretary.

“Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective and because of it, I had to run the military,” said the statement from Trump to 60 Minutes.

“Mark Esper was a stiff who was desperate not to lose his job. He would do anything I wanted, that’s why I called him “Yesper.” He was a lightweight and figurehead, and I realized it very early on.”

In his statement, Trump also refuted claims that Esper had blocked consideration of using the Insurrection Act, which could have deployed active-duty troops to deal with civil unrest.

“This is Fake News,” Trump said of those reports. “The fact is I didn’t need to invoke the act and never did.”

The former president said “no comment” in response to whether he asked if he could “attack the drug cartels with missiles.”

Esper’s interview on “60 Minutes” comes ahead of the release of his new book “A Sacred Oath,” set for Tuesday.

Esper was fired in November 2020 amid arguments with Trump over police brutality and the response to protests over racial inequality in the U.S.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

The 60 minutes was very good, he wasn't lying..
If you had watched it you'd know that..
It was a very good interview, for sure.

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