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. In fact, 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.” Read more at Axios.
Peaceful protesters are one thing. Looters and arsonists are another. I don’t see an issue with the supposed question by the President, in regard to the second category, and actually wonder why that wasn’t implemented.
Who cares. I’m loving my new 72 inch plasma tv I grabbed off the shelf of my local Target store, before burning it to the ground.
“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper says Trump asked.
That would have been a great idea. Over twenty people were murdered and over two billion dollars of damage was caused by the George Floyd riots. Had the police shot people in the legs (after appropriate warnings) none of that would have happened.
The reality is that many of these protests turned violent, destructive, and even deadly. Yet, law enforcement was held back from intervening, doing their job, protecting civilians, businesses, and even police precincts and government offices. If warning shots were not warranted before, use of lethal force against the violent protesters certainly was.
This is terrible. Trump should resign.
Maybe the people who stormed the US Capitol last January 6 should have been shot? But Trump keeps complaining about the justified shooting of the violent criminal Ashli Babbitt. Basically, he approves of violent thugs sho support him. Mussolini was similar.
Is that the best you can do?
It’s amazing how these people many times think they’re hurting Trump, while they’re really just helping him appeal to the regular middle-class American. Again and again.