WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Mark Esper is facing the most politically charged crisis of his tenure, criticized for calling protester-filled streets a…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Mark Esper is facing the most politically charged crisis of his tenure, criticized for calling protester-filled streets a military “battle space” and accused of failing to keep the military out of politics.
At the same time, eleven months into the job, Esper is seeing his relationship with President Donald Trump tested by the storm over the police killing of George Floyd and Esper’s urging of caution in the use of military force.
Esper, an Army veteran and former Army secretary, has sometimes subtly pushed back on Trump, including when the president intervened in the military justice system last year to pardon two soldiers accused of war crimes. But he has stayed closely aligned with the president’s national security policies and kept in his good graces.
On Wednesday, Esper publicly distanced himself from Trump’s threats to use the full force of the military to quell street protests around the country, emphatically arguing against invoking the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to use active-duty troops in a law enforcement role.
The possibility of using the Insurrection Act, which has not been invoked since the 1992 rioting in Los Angeles, had been discussed in the White House but never explicitly proposed publicly by Trump. The president has suggested he would use all available military force, however, if state governors couldn’t stop the violence.
The Insurrection Act should be invoked, Esper told reporters, “only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” He declared, “We are not in one of those situations now.” Aides emphasized later that Esper is not opposed to using the military to support federal and state law enforcement agencies when asked.
