TRUMP ‘WANTED PROTESTERS SHOT’

Former United States defence secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, once the subject of a lawsuit against the Pentagon, will hit bookshelves next week with new revelations about his time in former president Donald Trump’s administration.

Esper claims in the book that Trump asked him if they could shoot protesters who had gathered around the White House after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, according to news website Axios. “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something,” Trump said, according to the report on Esper’s book. The book will be released next Tuesday.

The memoir, A Sacred Oath, is the latest in a flurry of books about the Trump administration. Former White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway’s memoir, Here’s the Deal, will be out May 24. Axios reported Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will release his book on August 8.

Esper had sued the Pentagon over the use of classified information for the book but dropped the challenge in February, according to the Associated Press. Axios reported that “nearly three dozen four-star generals, senior civilians and some cabinet members” reviewed the book. The book claims Trump, “red faced and complaining loudly about the protests”, asked Esper about shooting protesters as they sat in the Oval Office.

“The good news – this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper wrote, 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.”

Other accounts have shown Trump was at odds with advisers over the response to the protests. A book by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender said that Trump lobbed expletives at General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Situation Room over the response.