Mark Esper was appointed by Donald Trump as his second defence secretary in July 2019. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/EPA.
Former United States Secretary of Defense Mark Esper revealed that he prevented two military invasions during his tenure in Donald Trump’s administration.
Specifically, the invasions would have been ordered against Venezuela and Iran. The Trump administration also proposed to apply a new blockade to Cuba. These proposals occurred during the last year of Trump’s presidency, detailed Esper.
These statements, issued in an interview with the CBS network, are documented in Esper’s memoirs, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times. The statements have been confirmed by at least six officials who held important positions with the administration of disgraced former president Trump, and in the current US administration.
BOMBAZO… “Trump contempló una acción militar en Venezuela en su último año de gobierno”, así lo reveló Mark Esper exsecretario de Defensa de EE.UU. en una entrevista. El funcionario dijo que evitó que Trump tomara decisiones peligrosas pic.twitter.com/rtzxEwCDCc
— Julio Riobó VTV (@JRioboVTV) May 10, 2022
Esper said that orders for military invasion came up regularly: “At various times during the—certainly the last year of the administration, you know, folks in the White House are proposing to take military action against Venezuela. To … strike Iran. At one point, somebody propose we blockade Cuba.”
Esper recalled that in the final months of Trump’s presidency, it was critical that he be informed about all decisions that were being made, in order to prevent situations that could have taken the US in a “dark direction.”
Esper was fired via Twitter by Donald Trump just a few days after the 2020 presidential elections, which Trump was attempting to discredit as fraudulent. Esper had been at odds with Trump on a number of issues. Perhaps most significant was Esper’s insistence, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, that there were no legal grounds on which to deploy active-service troops on the streets of US cities, as Trump wanted.
Featured image: Mark Esper was appointed by Donald Trump as his second defense secretary in July 2019. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/EPA.
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Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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