DEF SEC OPPOSES TRUMP PLAN AND FORMER DEF SEC EXCORIATES THE PRESIDENT

Trump's own Pentagon chief publicly tells him NOT to use the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops - as president tweets 'get tough, police' after ordering combat Task Force 504 to D.C.

 

Daily Mail 

June 3, 2020

 

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters Wednesday he was opposed to invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to send the U.S. military to impose control of cities – even as the president talked tough on Twitter and ordered an infantry battalion to Washington, D.C.

 

Esper made the public statement of opposition to the idea after the White House publicly floated it on Monday – and after the administration took heat for the use of tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters out of Lafayette Park just before Esper joined President Donald Trump at a photo-op. 

 

'I say this not only as secretary of defense, but also as a former soldier and a former member of the National Guard,' Esper told reporters at a Pentagon press conference as he announced his position. 

 

'The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations,' he said.   

__________

 

Mattis goes after Trump: The president ‘tries to divide us’

 

By Lara Seligman 

 

Politico

June 3, 2020

 

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis broke his silence on the conduct of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, blasting him and top military leaders and saying he is “angry and appalled” with the events of the past week.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership,” Mattis said in a statement sent to reporters Wednesday evening.

This marked Mattis' first public criticism of his former boss since the retired Marine Corps general resigned in late 2018 over Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria.

While he did not cite any other officials by name, Mattis harshly criticized Pentagon leaders, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, for their handling of the military response to race-related protests across the country.

Even as Esper reversed a decision to send home active-duty troops on alert to respond to unrest in the national capital region on Wednesday, Mattis argued for deploying the military at home only on “very rare occasions,” and only at the request of state governors.

“We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose,” he wrote.

He cited Esper’s decision to pose in a “bizarre photo op” outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., after Attorney General Bill Barr ordered the clearing of protesters on Monday night. Esper said on Wednesday that he hadn’t known ahead of time that the photo op was happening.

Mattis called the decision to clear protesters in Lafayette Square an “abuse of executive authority” and said that Americans should “reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

Mattis also urged the public to reject Esper’s characterization of American cities as a “‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate,'” referring to the defense secretary’s comments comments to governors on Monday. (Esper said on Wednesday that in retrospect he would have used different language “so as not to distract from the more important matters at hand or allow some to suggest that we are militarizing the issue.”)

Mattis noted that when he joined the military, he took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, and “never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

Militarizing the response to civil unrest, as Mattis proclaims “we witnessed in Washington, DC,” sets up a “false conflict” between the military and civilian society, he said.

A White House spokesperson and multiple Pentagon spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mattis’ statement.