Mark Esper was fired after 16 months on the job trying to keep his head down politically
Washington:
President Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Monday that he had fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, further destabilizing a government already navigating Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the electoral defeat of Democrat Joe Biden.
“Mark Esper has been fired. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump said on Twitter.
He announced that Christopher Miller, the current director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a former special forces officer, would replace Esper as Acting Secretary of Defense.
Esper, Trump’s fourth Pentagon chief in four years, was fired after 16 months in office trying to keep his head down politically as he pursued fundamental reforms to the massive Pentagon bureaucracy and sought to reshape America’s defense posture in everyone to focus on the threat from China.
But Trump was angered when Esper resisted pressure to deploy federal troops to quell civil unrest, and also quelled Trump’s desire for a swift full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan as violence continues in the country.
Trump’s move, expected by many insiders, was nonetheless a shock, coming just a week after losing his re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden and just 10 weeks before he leaves the White House.
He added that it also adds to a sense of less security in the country, as Trump refuses to accept the verdict of last Tuesday’s election and has vowed to reverse it in court.
Miller spent 31 years in the military, deploying to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 with special forces.
After he retired, he became a consultant on clandestine operations and government intelligence.
In 2018-2019 he was an adviser to the White House on counterterrorism and transnational threats, and since 2019 he was deputy undersecretary of defense for special operations.
In August, he was appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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