Trump Defense Secretary Says Trump Wanted George Floyd Protesters Shot: ‘Shoot Them in the Legs’

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An upcoming book from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper claims former President Donald Trump wanted to use violent force against protesters who were demanding justice for the death of George Floyd.

Axios obtained a preview of the introduction for A Sacred Oath, Esper’s memoir on the tumultuousness he witnessed before Trump fired him after the 2020 election. The preview teases accounts of “extreme dysfunction in Trump’s White House,” and it includes Esper’s recollection that Trump angrily suggested shooting protesters for racial justice who were assembled outside of the White House back in June 2020.

“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump said, according to Esper. The former defense secretary goes on to say the remarks came during a meeting he described as “surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.”

“The good news — this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper adds. “The bad news — I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”

Axios reports that Esper drew Trump’s ire at the time by opposing Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 against the protests for racial justice that were popping up all over the country. Esper’s revelations corroborate Frankly, We Did Win This Election, the book published last year by Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, who also wrote Trump wanted to the military to take action and “just shoot” the protesters.