In 2020, then-President Donald Trump reportedly turned to his defense secretary, Mark Esper, and suggested that they launch missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs,” insisting when Esper expressed doubts that they could pull off the play without raising anyone’s suspicions. The New York Times reported the exchange, chronicled in Esper’s forthcoming book, on Thursday. Slated to hit shelves on Tuesday, A Sacred Oath recounts how Trump argued to Esper that Mexico didn’t “have control” over its own country. The president also reportedly maintained, over the defense secretary’s objections, that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly” and that “no one would know it was us.” Esper, who was fired in November 2020 after clashing with Trump over that summer’s racial justice protests, also writes that the president had asked about shooting Black Lives Matter activists who gathered outside the White House after the killing of George Floyd. “Can you just shoot them?” Trump asked in an excerpt that was reported by Axios last week. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
