- New details have emerged about Trump's reaction to protests that followed the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
- Trump wanted to deploy 10,000 active-duty troops to US cities, according to a new book.
- Mark Esper, then defense secretary, told Jonathan Karl that Trump wanted "rifles and bayonets."
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said there would've been active-duty troops with "rifles and bayonets" on American cities' streets amid 2020 protests over police brutality had he and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley not challenged former President Donald Trump, per ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl's new book.
Trump threatened to deploy the military during the height of nationwide anti-racism protests following the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In some places, there was looting, rioting, and violence in connection to the demonstrations.
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," Trump said on June 1, 2020. This came on the same day as Trump's infamous photo-op with a Bible in front of a church close to the White House — after law enforcement used tear gas to disperse protesters nearby.
Milley and Esper were both seen walking over to St. John's Church with Trump that day, a highly controversial move that seemingly suggested their approval of the president's threats and behavior. Privately, however, the two of them "argued with Trump earlier in the day, telling him it would be a mistake to invoke the Insurrection Act," Karl wrote. The Insurrection Act is a law that permits the president to deploy active duty troops under certain circumstances.
On June 3, Esper took his opposition to Trump invoking the Insurrection Act a step further by declaring it publicly. It was seen as a direct contradiction of the president.
"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," Esper said.
Trump was livid with Esper for expressing opposition to the Insurrection Act, Karl wrote, and lambasted his defense secretary during a White House meeting that also included Milley. Trump told Esper that the president alone had the power to invoke the Insurrection Act. Pushing back, Esper told Trump that he'd simply declared he was opposed to invoking the law and hadn't explicitly defied the president.
Esper was sending a "clear but unstated" message that he would resign rather than carry out that order, according to Karl.
Around that time, Milley also publicly apologized for being present during Trump's church photo-op. "I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics," Milley said in a graduation speech to National Defense University students.
Months after Trump left the White House, Karl asked Esper what would've happened if he and Milley had not challenged Trump on the issue of deploying the military to counter protests.
"I think we would have had active-duty troops on the streets, you know, with rifles and bayonets," Esper told Karl, adding that Trump wanted 10,000 active-duty troops in DC before preparing to deploy them across the country to deal with the "violence and the protests."
A Trump representative did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Following Esper's conversation with Trump on deploying troops, the former defense secretary said his chief concern was "to prevent the use of the military against American citizens during 'the days before, the day of, and the days after the election,'" Karl wrote.