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US President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, an unprecedented move by a president struggling to accept electoral defeat and is angry at a Pentagon leader who believes he was not loyal enough.
The decision was highly anticipated, as Trump had grown increasingly unhappy with Esper over the summer, including stark differences between them over the use of the military during the June civil unrest.
Alex Brandon / AP
US President Donald Trump fires Defense Secretary Mark Esper in an unprecedented move.
But the move could unsettle international allies and Pentagon leadership and injects another element of uncertainty into a difficult transition period as Joe Biden prepares to assume the presidency.
Presidents who win re-election often replace cabinet members, including the defense secretary, but losing presidents have kept their Pentagon bosses in place until Inauguration Day to preserve stability in the name of security. national.
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Trump announced the news in a tweet, saying that “effective immediately” Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will serve as acting secretary, eluding the department’s second-ranking official, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist.
“Chris will do a GREAT job!” Trump tweeted. “Mark Esper has been fired. I would like to thank you for your service. “
U.S. defense officials said Miller arrived at the Pentagon in the early afternoon to take over the job, and that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows informed Esper of the firing before Trump announced the move. On twitter.
However, other senior Pentagon and defense officials were caught off guard and learned of the decision through the media. Defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Trump’s abrupt decision to ditch Esper raises questions about what the president may try to do in the coming months before leaving office, including adjustments in the presence of troops abroad or other national security changes.
The decision was quickly condemned by Democratic members of Congress.
Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
US President Donald J. Trump remains angry at a Pentagon leader who he believes was not loyal enough.
“Firing 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 Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. in Washington. “President Trump’s decision to fire Secretary Esper, out of spite, is not only childish, it is also reckless.”
Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, said firing Esper “in the final weeks of a poor presidency is useless and only demonstrates instability damaging to national defense. American”.
Former military leaders also intervened. Jim Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as Republican Donald Rumsfeld’s top aide when Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense, wrote on Twitter that Esper’s firing was pointless.
“Things are already unstable internationally, and that doesn’t help,” he wrote. “We have to try to create stability in the transition time; hopefully the opponents will not try to take advantage.”
Biden has not said who he would appoint as defense chief, but is rumored to be considering appointing the first woman to the job: Michele Flournoy. Flournoy has served several times in the Pentagon, beginning 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 America’s allies and partners. The US hand that favors strong US military cooperation abroad.
Miller most recently served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center and prior to that was deputy undersecretary of defense and Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser. He has extensive experience with the military, having served as an infantryman in the Army Reserves and later as a special forces officer. He also served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After his retirement from the military, Miller worked as a defense contractor.
Esper’s strained relationship with Trump nearly collapsed last summer during civil unrest that sparked a debate within the administration about the proper role of the military in fighting internal unrest. Esper’s opposition to the use of active duty troops to help quell protests in Washington, DC, angered Trump and led to widespread speculation that the defense chief was willing to resign if he faced such a problem again.
During his roughly 16-month tenure, Esper generally supported Trump’s policies, but more recently he was expected to resign or be overthrown if Trump won re-election.
Historically, presidents have placed a high priority on stability at the Pentagon during political transitions. Since the creation of the Department of Defense and the post of Secretary of Defense in 1947, the only three presidents who lost elections for a second term (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush) kept their secretary of defense in office until Opening Day.
Esper, who was the official successor to former Marine Corps General James Mattis, routinely emphasized the importance of keeping the military and the Department of the Deaf out of politics. But it turned out to be an uphill struggle as Trump alternately praised those he called “his generals” and denigrated top Pentagon leaders as warriors dedicated to driving business for the defense industry.
Trump was angered by his first defense secretary, Mattis, who resigned in December 2018 over Trump’s abrupt, later rescinded decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria and then Esper. The divisions reflected Trump’s fundamentally different views on America’s place in the world, the value of international defense alliances, and the importance of protecting the military from national partisan politics.
During Trump’s tenure, the Pentagon has often been at the center of the tumult, caught up in a persistent and erratic debate over the use of US forces in the war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and on US soil, along the border. with Mexico and in the cities. rocked by civil unrest and rocked by coronavirus.
Esper’s departure has seemed inevitable since he publicly broke with Trump in June over the president’s push to deploy military troops to the streets of the nation’s capital in response to the civil unrest that followed the police assassination of George Floyd.
Esper publicly objected to Trump’s threats to invoke the two-century-old Insurrection Act, which would allow the president to use active duty troops in a law enforcement role. And Trump was enraged when Esper told reporters that the Insurrection Law should be invoked “only in the most urgent and dire situations” and that “we are not in one of those situations right now.”
The June civil unrest initially led Esper into controversy when he joined an entourage of Trump strolling from the White House to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photoshoot in which Trump held up a Bible. Critics condemned Esper, saying that he had allowed himself to be used as political support.
Esper said he didn’t know he was heading to a photoshoot, but thought he would see the damage to the church and National Guard troops in the area. He was accompanied by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who then publicly expressed his regret at being present in uniform.
