On November 9th President Trump tweeted out that he terminated Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
I am 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 Defense, effective immediately..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
…Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
We later got confirmation as to why he terminated him:
There it is. Confirmation that Esper and his team were fired for thwarting admin efforts to withdraw troops from Afghanistan
Its been 20 years there is no “premature withdrawal” pic.twitter.com/8b1xPiGCPf
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) November 10, 2020
We then saw Retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor join the pentagon as a Senior Adviser.
Scoop: Douglas Macgregor joining Pentagon as senior adviser to Acting SecDef. Sends the strongest possible signal that Trump wants to accelerate withdrawal of troops from the Middle East before the end of his presidency. https://t.co/grODh5w3aN
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) November 11, 2020
Axios:
President Trump’s newly installed acting Pentagon chief is bringing on a senior adviser in a sign the administration wants to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East before the end of his presidency in January, three people familiar with the move told Axios.
Why it matters: A senior administration official says a wave of firings at the Pentagon and the hiring of Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor is in part a settling of Trump’s personal scores — but senior White House officials also have made clear “they want them more publicly to talk about getting out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.”
Trump, who ran in 2016 on a promise to bring U.S. troops home, is frustrated with the slow pace of withdrawing troops from the Middle East, another senior administration official said.
The president has told advisers on numerous occasions he wants troops home from Afghanistan by Christmas.
In a 2019 interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Macgregor said he would advise the president to get out of Afghanistan “as soon as possible,” including removing the U.S. embassy from Kabul, and that talking to the Taliban was unnecessary.
Macgregor also said the U.S. needs to pull its troops out of Syria immediately and America had no national interest there.
He said, “We need to listen very carefully to the Iranians … find out what their interests are and look for areas where we can cooperate” and that the U.S. needs to “turn the operational control of the [Korean] Peninsula militarily over to President Moon and the Koreans.”
Fox News segment featuring US Army, Colonel Douglas Macgregor:
Retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor:
“Everyone is scared to death of Donald Trump because Donald Trump plays chess in multiple dimensions simultaneously. He has now checkmated all of his potential opponents, his competitors. So clearly, he’s a dangerous man†😎 pic.twitter.com/BxPR5YO2x3
— Woj Pawelczyk (@Woj_Pawelczyk) October 25, 2019
Huge news.
The Palmieri Report is a Pro-America News Outlet founded by Jacob Palmieri two years ago at the age of 19. Since its founding, it has gotten over 2M pages views and over 20k followers. The Palmieri Report is dedicated to giving people the truth so that they can form their own informed political opinions.
