Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper spoke out against White House considerations for the invocation of the Insurrection Act to quell protests in June 2020, and then-President Donald Trump blamed him for taking that option off the table, according to Esper's new memoir.
At the time, Trump was concerned about looking"weak" as millions of protesters took to the streets to protest after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Esper writes in A Sacred Oath, which the Washington Examiner obtained ahead of its planned release later this week.
"You betrayed me," Trump yelled during the meeting,"I'm the president not you!" He added,"I'm the president. It's my prerogative," and said, it's"my call, not yours.""You took away my authority," the former president added. When Esper pushed back on the notion, Trump responded,"That's not your position to do."
Days earlier, Esper wrote he and Milley were in the White House as Trump contemplated how to react to the nationwide protests, some of which grew destructive, though were largely non-violent. Trump had already begun contemplating invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy active-duty U.S. troops to cities across the country.
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