Mark Esper has been fired.
The news broke early Monday afternoon via a tweet (shocking I know) from Donald Trump who announced the firing of the defense secretary while simultaneously announcing that Director of National Counterterrorism Center Christopher C. Miller will be the acting secretary for the next 10 weeks until Trump’s presidency comes. to an end.
Aside from the upcoming change of administrations, Esper seemed on his way out with news floating around late last week that the now former Defense Secretary had compiled a resignation letter. Whether this is an actual firing and not Trump trying to beat Esper to the punch is I guess something to possibly consider in all of this, especially since the administration originally tried to spin James Mattis’ resignation as a retirement.
Esper was originally dubbed a “yes man” by Trump who gave him the nickname “Yesper”. However, the real fallout between the two apparently happened this past summer when Esper publicly disagreed with the President when it came to deploying troops to U.S. cities to put down Black Lives Matter protesters.
Anyways, you can probably expect more firings over the course of the final weeks of the Trump administration as the President looks to keep all attention on him while he can.
