‘Complaining’ Donald Trump Asked Me if We Could Shoot George Floyd Protesters, His Defense Secretary Says

As protesters filled the streets around the White House after George Floyd’s horrific murder, then-President Donald Trump grew increasingly erratic, according to Mark Esper, his defense secretary. So erratic, in fact, that Trump wanted gunshots fired to keep demonstrators back, according to Esper’s new book A Sacred Oath, which Axios has seen. “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper says Trump asked. The book, out May 10, has the Pentagon’s stamp of approval, and much of the behavior by the president was witnessed by others, according to Esper, who described a scene in the Oval Office that June, writing that “it was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests underway in Washington, D.C.” Esper goes on to say, “The good news—this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper writes, according to Axios. “The bad news—I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”