(Washington) Donald Trump inquired in 2020 about the possibility of bombing drug trafficking laboratories in Mexico with his Minister of Defense, reports the latter, Mark Esper, in a book which will be published on May 10.
Posted at 7:25 p.m.
According to extracts from the book quoted by the New York Timesthe US president believed at the time that the United States could claim not to be behind such a missile strike on Mexican soil, says Mr. Esper, who was Donald Trump’s defense minister between July 2019 and November 2020.
The former White House tenant reportedly asked twice if the armed forces could “fire missiles at Mexico to destroy the drug labs”, writes Mark Esper in his memoir entitled A Sacred Oath (A sacred oath), claiming that Donald Trump’s statements had left him speechless.
Donald Trump had decided to dismiss Mark Esper in November 2020, a few days after the announcement of the results of the American presidential election.
Relations between the fiery septuagenarian president and his minister had been strained since the head of the Pentagon had publicly opposed a few months earlier the deployment of the army to suppress anti-racist demonstrations in the country.
In other excerpts from his memoirs, Mark Esper writes that on the sidelines of these demonstrations in June 2020, the president, very irritated, would have launched in the Oval office: “You can’t just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something. »