Esper’s out, says president

Acting secretary of defense picked

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the latest change for a Cabinet position that has seen much turnover during Trump’s term in office.

Trump announced the decision on Twitter, saying Esper had been “terminated.”

The president said he was appointing Christopher Miller, the “highly respected” director of the National Counterterrorism Center, to be acting defense secretary — sidestepping the department’s No. 2-ranking official, Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist.

“Chris will do a GREAT job!” Trump tweeted. “Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.”

Miller will be the fifth man to lead the Pentagon under Trump, who made a point of noting that Miller has been approved by the Senate already.

Miller is a former Army Green Beret who previously served as the top counterterrorism policy official on the Trump White House’s National Security Council.

But the move could unsettle international allies and Pentagon leadership, and it injects another element of uncertainty into

a rocky period as Joe Biden prepares to assume the presidency. Biden is the projected winner of the presidential race, but Trump has continued to challenge the results.

Presidents who win reelection often replace Cabinet members, but losing presidents historically have kept their Pentagon chiefs in place until Inauguration Day in the name of national security, putting a high priority on military stability during political transitions.

Since the creation of the Defense Department and the position of defense secretary in 1947, the only three presidents to lose reelection — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — all kept their defense chiefs in place.

Biden has not said whom he would appoint as defense chief, but he is widely rumored to be considering naming the first woman to the post — Michele Flournoy.

Flournoy has served in the Pentagon multiple times, starting in the 1990s and most recently as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009 to 2012. She is well-known on Capitol Hill as a moderate Democrat and is regarded among U.S. allies and partners as a steady hand who favors strong U.S. military cooperation abroad.

ESPER’S OUSTER

In a letter to Trump, Esper referred to his efforts to keep the Pentagon apolitical. Esper said he served as defense secretary and Army secretary “in full faith to my sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution, and to safeguard the country and its interests, while keeping the Department out of politics and abiding by the values Americans hold dear.”

Esper didn’t thank Trump, but he also didn’t openly criticize the president or his policies. He said he accepts Trump’s decision to replace him, adding, “I step aside knowing there is much we achieved at the Defense Department over the last eighteen months to protect the nation and improve the readiness, capabilities, and professionalism of the joint force, while fundamentally transforming and preparing the military for the future.”

Esper routinely emphasized the importance of keeping the military and the Defense Department out of politics. But it proved to be a struggle as Trump alternately praised what he called “his generals” and denigrated top Pentagon leaders as warmongers devoted to drumming up business for the defense industry.

During Trump’s presidency, the Pentagon has often been at the center of the tumult, caught in debates over the use of American forces in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and on U.S. soil, at the Mexican border and in cities roiled by civil unrest and rocked by the coronavirus.

Esper’s downfall had been expected for months, after he took the rare step in June of disagreeing publicly with Trump and saying that active-duty military troops should not be sent to control racial protests in U.S. cities. The president, who had threatened to use the Insurrection Act to do that, was furious, officials said.

Esper told reporters that the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act should be invoked “only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” and, “We are not in one of those situations now.”

The comments came after he had accompanied Trump on a walk across Lafayette Square outside the White House, where protesters had just been teargassed, prompting condemnation from former military and civilian Defense Department officials.

Esper’s spokesman tried at the time to walk back the comment, saying Trump did not want to use the act either, or else he would have invoked it already. “We fail to see the disconnect,” said Jonathan Hoffman, a spokesman for Esper.

White House officials said they disagreed.

Esper, 56, a former secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, became defense secretary in July 2019 after Trump withdrew the nomination of Patrick Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, amid an FBI inquiry into allegations from Shanahan’s former wife that he had punched her in the stomach. Shanahan denied the accusations.

Shanahan had been standing in for Jim Mattis, who resigned in 2018, citing differences with the president.

While Esper underwent Senate confirmation, Richard Spencer, the then-Navy secretary, served as acting defense secretary for a week.

Esper had taken pains to hew to the Trump line during his tenure. But aversion to invoking the Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops to battle protesters across the country runs deep in the Pentagon.

LOW PROFILE

By midsummer, Esper was said to be walking a fine line to push back on other contentious Trump positions involving the military.

The Pentagon, without once mentioning the word “Confederate,” announced in July that it would essentially ban displays of the Confederate flag on military installations around the world.

In a carefully worded memo that Defense Department officials said was written to avoid igniting another defense of the flag from Trump, Esper issued guidance that listed the types of flags that could be displayed on military installations — in barracks, on cars and on signs.

The guidance did not specifically say that Confederate flags were banned, but they do not fit in any of the approved categories — and any such flags are prohibited.

After his comment in June, Esper avoided the media and kept a low profile to prevent being pulled into election politics.

He traveled often beginning in early summer, including trips to North Africa, the Middle East and India. But the secretary deliberately limited his public comments while on the road, and when he did speak in public, it was often in prerecorded remarks, on safe subjects.

Esper also diverged from Trump on the issue of the coronavirus pandemic. The defense secretary strictly adhered to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on wearing a mask when unable to keep a recommended social distance, in contrast to the president, who largely refused to wear a mask and contracted the virus during an outbreak at the White House.

At a virtual town-hall-style meeting for the Pentagon, Esper responded to a sailor on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford who complained that the required social distancing onboard the ship was hurting morale.

“It is tedious — I understand that,” Esper said. “But I think it’s showing, in terms of the Navy’s results in terms of infection rates, that they’re doing a very good job.”

MILITARY QUESTIONS

Trump’s abrupt move to fire Esper triggered questions about what the president may try to do before he leaves office, including adjustments in troop presence overseas or other national security changes.

More broadly, the U.S. military continued to operate as usual. U.S. officials said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Miller on Monday and also gathered the top military commanders and chiefs for a secure meeting.

Officials said Miller’s message so far is that he won’t make immediate changes and that the department will stay the course. Military leaders, meanwhile, were calling top officials in their various geographic regions to assure them that the U.S. military is maintaining a stable presence around the world.

In a separate message to the force, Esper expressed a twinge of disappointment, saying, “I step aside knowing that there is much more we could accomplish together to advance America’s national security.” He said much was achieved, and “through thick and thin, however, we have always put People and Country first.”

Trump’s move was quickly condemned by Democratic members of Congress.

“Dismissing politically appointed national security leaders during a transition is a destabilizing move that will only embolden our adversaries and put our country at greater risk,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “President Trump’s decision to fire Secretary Esper out of spite is not just childish, it’s also reckless.”

Former military leaders weighed in. Jim Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral, wrote on Twitter that “Things are already unstable internationally, and this does not help.”

Republicans praised Esper but largely avoided criticizing Trump. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, told reporters that it was Trump’s decision and said, “I learned a long time ago I don’t tell the president not to do anything.”