In former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's new memoir, he details times how former President Donald Trump would suggest launching missiles targeting drug labs into Mexico and shooting protesters. In response to media backlash to this revelation, Donald Trump Jr. defended his father and claimed he didn't understand the problem with the violent suggestions.
I’m still trying to figure out the recent media outrage about my father possibly wanting to target Mexican drug cartel manufacturing facilities in Mexico… Is that supposed to be a bad thing???
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 6, 2022
"Is that supposed to be a bad thing???" Trump Jr. tweeted Friday.
Esper describes Trump wanting not only to aim missiles at these drug labs, but also to hide the fact that the U.S. had fired them.
RELATED: Trump wanted to launch missiles into Mexico to rid of drug labs
"We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly ... no one would know it was us," Trump is quoted as saying in the memoir.
Former DHS aide Elizabeth Neumann also responded to the missile information from Esper's memoir, which was released in a New York Times article Thursday.
Yes, he was dead serious.
— Elizabeth Neumann 🙏 🇺🇦🌻 (@NeuSummits) May 6, 2022
I’m grateful Esper received clearance to tell the public.
People think those of us that served and now warn of how dangerous he is exaggerate the incompetence and unlawfulness.
Nope.
It’s incomprehensible how bad it was on a near hourly basis. https://t.co/nJMwkkDFLa
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
"I'm grateful Esper received clearance to tell the public," Neumann tweeted Thursday evening. "It's incomprehensible how bad it was on a near hourly basis."
Esper has received some backlash for withholding this information until now. These details were released in news articles by Axios and The New York Times, as promotion for his memoir "A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times," which will be released May 10.
"Mark Esper, secretary of the defense, who sits with the president of the United States, who proves by his utterances, as quoted in Mr. Esper's book, that he is unstable," analyst Mike Barnicle said on an MSNBC segment. "What does Mark Esper do as secretary of defense? He goes back and shuts up about it until Random House or whatever the publisher was, he hands him a check. These people ought to be banned from coming on and promoting these books."
