Yet another Trump tell-all is headed to the book racks. It brings up the same question that we have pondered before when one of these confessionals drops and that is why oh why can’t somebody like Esper (or Stephanie Grisham or Bill Barr, or Mike Pence, take your pick) come forward in real time, when all the insanity is happening, and tell us then?
Yes, politics is a cynical business and we get it that memoirs and exposes exist to make money and create a legacy for the author. Point taken. But when does saving the country from the clutches of an obvious madman become a more compelling pursuit than lining one’s pockets? Answer: not yet and don’t look for it anytime soon.
Mark Esper, Trump’s former Secretary of Defense, is the latest member of the GOP Administration From Hell to publish and he describes a scene wherein he essentially played Group Captain Lionel Mandrake to Trump’s General Jack D. Ripper. New York Times:
Mr. Esper describes an administration completely overtaken by concerns about Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, with every decision tethered to that objective. He writes that he could have resigned, and weighed the idea several times, but that he believed the president was surrounded by so many yes-men and people whispering dangerous ideas to him that a loyalist would have been put in Mr. Esper’s place. The real act of service, he decided, was staying in his post to ensure that such things did not come to pass.
One such idea emerged from Mr. Trump, who was unhappy about the constant flow of drugs across the southern border, during the summer of 2020. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Esper at least twice if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.”
“They don’t have control of their own country,” Mr. Esper recounts Mr. Trump saying.
When Mr. Esper raised various objections, Mr. Trump said that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that “no one would know it was us.” Mr. Trump said he would just say that the United States had not conducted the strike, Mr. Esper recounts, writing that he would have thought it was a joke had he not been staring Mr. Trump in the face.
On a scale of one to ten, how much nuttier is that, more or less, than General Ripper’s diatribe about precious bodily fluids? To my way of thinking, it’s a hell of a lot nuttier to think one can “quietly” attack our ally and good neighbor to the south, with a targeted missile strike aimed only at “drug labs.”
Moreover, the fact that Trump said, “They don’t have control of their country” sure sounds like he believed that he was the one to do something about that fact. And what was next? Rolling tanks across the Canadian border? Nuking Iceland?
You think I’m joking? This is the same guy who wanted to put Chinese flags on jets and “bomb the shit out of Russia.”
“And then we say, ‘China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it,’ and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”
Oh, funnee ha ha. That’s a howler. And for a real belly laugh, maybe drop a few H-bombs just to see the pretty fireworks. Maybe do it on Melania’s birthday.
And it wasn’t just Trump, it was the toxic school of fish that swam in with him.
Mr. Esper singles out officials whom he considered erratic or dangerous influences on Mr. Trump, with the policy adviser Stephen Miller near the top of the list. He recounts that Mr. Miller proposed sending 250,000 troops to the southern border, claiming that a large caravan of migrants was en route. “The U.S. armed forces don’t have 250,000 troops to send to the border for such nonsense,” Mr. Esper writes that he responded.
In October 2019, after members of the national security team assembled in the Situation Room to watch a feed of the raid that killed the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mr. Miller proposed securing Mr. al-Baghdadi’s head, dipping it in pig’s blood and parading it around to warn other terrorists, Mr. Esper writes. That would be a “war crime,” Mr. Esper shot back.
Mr. Miller flatly denied the episode and called Mr. Esper “a moron.”
Mr. Esper also viewed Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, as a huge problem for the administration and the national security team in particular. Mr. Meadows often threw the president’s name around when barking orders, but Mr. Esper makes clear that he often was not certain whether Mr. Meadows was communicating what Mr. Trump wanted or what Mr. Meadows wanted.
Also the guy who wanted to nuke hurricanes, wondered why we even have nukes if we don’t use them, and would cheerfully have used missiles on “blue” states and cities.