Another post-Trump admin book

And another author who didn't report Trump lunacy when it would have been helpful.

In the heated summer of 2020, thwarted in his desire for a violent crackdown on protesters for racial justice, Donald Trump included his vice-president in a complaint that senior advisers were “losers”.

Trump’s second defense secretary, Mark Esper, details the Oval Office outburst in a new book. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, will be published next week.

[...]

Esper’s account of an extraordinary presidential question in the same meeting – “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something” – has already been reported.

[...]

Amid such revelations from the book, the New York Times related Esper’s claim that Trump once proposed launching “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs”.

According to Esper, Trump said “no one would know it was us”, because he would simply deny responsibility.

[...]

[Trump policy adviser Stephen] Miller is also alleged to have suggested severing the head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Islamic State leader killed by the US, dipping it in pig’s blood and parading it as a warning to other terrorists.

[...]

Like [former AG Bill] Barr in his own memoir, Esper does not stint when describing how he says Trump reacted when he was told [Gen Mark] Milley had no command authority over active duty or national guard forces Trump wanted to deploy [against BLM protesters].

According to Esper: “‘You are losers!’ the president railed. ‘You are all fucking losers!’

[...]

“This wasn’t the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward Barr, Milley and me.”

Esper expands on Barr’s account of what the then-attorney general called a “tantrum”, saying Pence was also a target.

“He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden.

  Guardian

What a joy it must have been to work in that administration. And no one thought the 25th Amendment might be in order.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.