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‘Get the hell out of the Pentagon’: Ex-CIA officer shreds Mark Esper for defying Trump’s hardline response to raging riots

June 5, 2020 | | Print Article

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Defense Secretary Mark Esper, an unelected bureaucrat, has been urged to “get the hell out of the Pentagon” over his unilateral decision to not use the military to quell the riots that were raging across the U.S. amid fallout from the killing of George Floyd.

Two days after President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell the then-raging riots, Esper delivered a press conference during which he unilaterally shot down the idea.

“I’ve always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities and these situations in support of local law enforcement,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.

“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. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

Watch (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):

But who gave him the authority to make such a call? Nobody, according to former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright, who appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” late Thursday to express outrage over Esper’s unilateral decision-making.

On one hand, he wasn’t surprised.

“That’s what we’ve seen the past three years, isn’t it? Brennan, Clapper Comey … that’s not a new phenomenon, of course. It’s a horrifying one, but it’s not new,” he said.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence John Clapper and FBI Director James Comey were infamous for their own unilateral decision-making.

“But what we have here I think more specifically is a secretary of defense who doesn’t get it,” Wright continued. “Right now, this country is on fire. We are facing an insurrection by people that we don’t quite understand who they are, but by all indications, they are violent leftist thugs.”

“And what Secretary Esper doesn’t quite seem to get either is that the nation is panicking. Seventy-one percent of us want the National Guard in our cities tonight. Fifty-eight percent of us want the military in our cities tonight.”

Fact-check: TRUE.

Why all the panic? Because groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter have hijacked so-called “peaceful” George Floyd protests and used them to wreak havoc in already beleaguered communities throughout the nation.

In the process, an untold number of businesses have been burnt to the ground, stores looted of all their goods and innocent men and women outright murdered.

“And finally,” Wright continued, “we have a media that is feeding this flame, this horrific fire, this seditiousness. … Put it all together. We can’t put forward the National Guard because that would be escalation? Now we take off the military from the table? What does that leave?”

“It leaves vigilante justice. It’s you and me and everybody watching this program arming ourselves. Is that how we run a republic? No sir, it is not, and you do not want a country that goes there, and that is precisely where the nation is headed!”

And if Esper can’t understand this, he ought to “get the hell out of “town,” Wright concluded:

“We need for all of our leadership to understand that, and if Sec. Esper doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand that the oath is to protect ourselves from threats both foreign and domestic, by God get the hell out of the Pentagon and let somebody lead!”

Listen below to everything Wright had to say:

Earlier on the program, before Wright appeared, host Tucker Carlson echoed the same sentiment but focused more-so on Esper being an unelected bureaucrat.

“Esper was not elected to that position,” he said. “He was appointed to it by the president, who was himself elected. That’s the chain of command in a democracy. Voters choose their representatives. Those representatives choose their staff. But all power flows from the public who vote in elections.”

“When cabinet officials ignore the instructions of elected leaders, they are ignoring voters and attacking democracy. In the case of the military, it’s especially dangerous. Our armed services are controlled by the president, who’s elected.”

But what happens when appointed officials like Esper choose to ignore the instructions and wishes of their superiors — which in this case is the president of the United States?

“It is not up to Mark Esper,” Carlson added. “If Mark Esper doesn’t like it, he can resign and he can vote against Donald Trump in the fall. That’s his option. What Esper can’t do, what we cannot let him do if we care about democracy, is to subvert the order of the president he works for — no matter who the president is.”

Listen to the full segment below:

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Vivek Saxena
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