Amid tweeting baseless election fraud claims on Monday, Donald Trump turned to Twitter to announce the firing of his defense secretary. “Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” he wrote. Esper and the president had been in a cold war since June, when according to the New York Times, he publicly distanced himself from Trump’s threat to send active-duty military troops to quell mass protests against police brutality. At a June press conference, Esper told reporters that the Insurrection Act is needed “only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” and “we are not in one of those situations now.”
A former army officer and a former executive at Raytheon Technologies—a multinational defense and aerospace manufacturer—Esper was appointed in July 2019, after Trump withdrew his nomination for Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan following an FBI inquiry into allegations of domestic violence made by his former wife. Shanahan has denied the accusations. Prior to Shanahan stepping in, the position had been filled by retired Marine General James Mattis, who would resign in December 2018 and also deliver a scathing review of Trump’s leadership on the way out. In June, Mattis condemned Trump’s response to the nationwide protests and suggested the president was a threat to the Constitution.
While Esper clashed at times with Trump, such as when he barred the Confederate flag at military bases, he also faced criticism for appearing to acquiesce to the president’s needs. Most notably, Esper appeared alongside the president for the infamous photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church after the clearing of protesters. (Esper later claimed he wasn’t in on the stunt.) In an interview with the Military Times released shortly after his termination was made public, Esper rejected perceptions that he was a yes-man. “My frustration is I sit here and say, ‘Hm, 18 Cabinet members. Who’s pushed back more than anybody?’ Name another Cabinet secretary that’s pushed back,” he said. “Have you seen me on a stage saying, ‘Under the exceptional leadership of blah-blah-blah, we have blah-blah-blah-blah?’”
He will be replaced by Christopher C. Miller, who was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Though Esper had been seen as a likely postelection target of Trump’s, such a shakeup still appears unprecedented. “Presidents historically have put a high priority on stability at the Pentagon during political transitions,” noted the Associated Press. “Since the creation of the Defense Department and the position of defense secretary in 1947, the only three presidents to lose election for a second term—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush—all kept their secretary of defense in place until Inauguration Day.” Of course, Trump is also bucking tradition by refusing to concede to the winner of the election, Joe Biden, and instead lying about the results of it.
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