Trump wanted to secretly launch missiles on Mexico drug lords, labs: Ex-defence secretary
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Donald Trump asked about the possibility of bombing drug trafficking labs in Mexico while he was US president, former defence secretary Mark Esper says in a book.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that former President Donald Trump discussed secretly conducting a missile assault on Mexico in 2020 with Defense Secretary Mark Esper to "destroy the drug labs."
According to Esper's upcoming memoir, A Sacred Oath, Trump, who was enraged by drug trafficking across the US-Mexico border, asked at least twice about "quietly" firing Patriot missiles into Mexico and then claiming credit.
According to reports, Esper was afraid that Trump might use the military to help him win, and he urged others in the Pentagon to be on the lookout for "strange" directives from the White House.
This book isn’t the first time Esper has talked about Trump’s plans to take on the drug cartels.
Last year, he told the New York Times that Trump had to be persuaded out of invading Mexico in a rash plan to stop the flow of drugs at the source.
Trump has also recommended murdering migrants attempting to enter the United States through the Mexican border.
According to Axios, Trump had proposed that Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating outside the White House in the summer of 2020 should also be shot, according to Esper.
According to Axios in 2019, Trump regularly discussed using nuclear weapons to avoid hurricanes in discussions with national security officials. Officials respectfully dismissed Trump's offer to "nuke" the storms to prevent them from making landfall in the United States, according to Axios.
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