‘So absurd’: Mark Esper details Trump official’s proposal to send 250K troops to U.S.-Mexico border – By Myah Wood (Politico) / May 5, 2022
The former Defense secretary, promoting his new book, harshly criticizes the administration he served in.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, making the media rounds before his book release, said in interview excerpts released on Thursday that he was “flabbergasted” by a Trump official’s proposal in spring 2020 to send as many as 250,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Esper recounted an exchange with Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to then-President Donald Trump and the architect behind the president’s immigration agenda. Miller had suggested the U.S. send a quarter-million troops — what would have been the largest use of the military inside the country since the Civil War — to handle “caravans” at the southern border, Esper said.
“I think he’s joking,” the former Defense secretary said in the interview with CBS’ Norah O’Donnell set to air on Sunday. “And then I turn around, and I look at him in these deadpan eyes. It’s clear that he is not joking. And so I say something like, ‘Well, look, DHS can handle whatever caravans are coming up. They’ve done so in the past.’ He said — he repeats — ‘No, we need a quarter-million troops,’ and I just turned squarely around him, face him and say, ‘I don’t have a quarter-million troops to send on some ridiculous mission to the border.’”
Esper’s upcoming book, “A Sacred Oath,” is set to publish Tuesday and will add to the growing volume of material that reveals the inner workings of the Trump administration. The book will offer Esper’s “candid perspective” and shed light on unknown stories from the Trump presidency, according to The New York Times, which reported some of the upcoming memoir’s contents on Thursday.
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