US Election Fallout: Trump Fires Pentagon Chief, Mark Esper
For contradicting President Donald Trump and resisting the deployment of active-duty troops, United States (US) Defence Secretary, Mark Esper is now a jobless man
As expected, political commentators have described the termination of Esper’s appointment as one of the major fallouts of the now controversy-ridden 2020 US presidential election the Trump lost and is currently exploring legal options in many of the battleground States.
They are also warning the development presents the latest sign that the transition to a new Joe Biden administration in January will be turbulent on both domestic and foreign fronts.
Esper was fired by tweet on Monday afternoon and President Trump thereafter declared he was “pleased to announce that Christopher C Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defence, effective immediately.
“Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.”
Appointed by Trump as his second Defence Secretary in July 2019, Esper had been at odds with the President on a number of issues, most importantly his insistence at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer that there were no legal grounds to deploy active-service troops on the streets of US cities.
He was also working with Congress on legislation to rename US army bases named after Confederate Generals. In a final interview, Esper predicted that he would be followed by a “Yes man”, adding “And then God help us.”
In a coolly worded final letter to the President, Esper wrote: “I serve the country in deference to the Constitution, so I accept your decision to replace me.”
He left the Pentagon quietly on Monday without the “clap-out” from staff traditionally accorded to a departing Secretary.
Miller arrived at the Pentagon on Monday amid questions about the legality of his appointment. By law, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, currently David Norquist, would become Acting Secretary in the event of a sudden departure at the top.
Furthermore, the law requires that a Secretary of Defence to have been out of active duty military service for seven years. Miller, a former Green Beret, only left the military in 2014.
The law can be sidestepped by a vote in Congress, as was done for Esper’s predecessor James Mattis, a retired Marine.
In the face of Trump’s widely reported fury of his intransigence, Esper stopped giving press briefings in the Pentagon in July. He is reported to have written his resignation letter before the election, and Trump may have moved abruptly to prevent his Defence Secretary from taking the initiative.
The President insisted he fired Mattis in December 2018, even though Mattis’s critical resignation letter had been widely circulated. – With The Guardian reports
