President Donald Trump had raised the possibility of “shooting in the legs” of protesters gathered around the White House during the 2020 anti-racism protests, according to a forthcoming book by his former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
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In excerpts obtained by Axios and published Monday, the former head of the Pentagon between July 2019 and November 2020 reports that on the sidelines of anti-racism protests in June 2020, the president, very irritated, would have launched in the Oval Office: “You don’t can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something”.
On June 1, 2020, the surroundings of the White House had been the scene of agitated demonstrations, following the death a few days earlier of the African-American George Floyd, killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in the north of the States. -United.
The context, according to Mark Esper, was “surreal”, he writes in his memoir to be published on May 10 in the United States, and titled “A Sacred Oath”.
“The good news: it was not a difficult decision” not to follow the idea launched by the Republican president, he continues. “The bad: I had to get Trump to back down without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”
In a book published in August 2021, journalist Michael Bender had already reported that the billionaire had repeatedly exclaimed: “Shoot them”, on the sidelines of these same gatherings.
In front of images of repression of the demonstrators, Donald Trump would also have launched: “This is how you have to take care of these people. Smash their skulls!”.