Donald Trump shows a photo of the US/Mexico border wall as he speaks during a roundtable briefing on border security at the United States Border Patrol Yuma Station in Yuma, Arizona, June 23, 2020.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump wanted to bomb drug labs in Mexico, a new book says.
Trump touted the idea several times, the NYT’s Maggie Haberman writes.
Trump was fixated on the US-Mexican border as president.
Former President Donald Trump touted bombing drugs labs in Mexico following a suggestion by a senior health official, according to a new book.
In extracts in The Washington Post from “Confidence Man,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book about Trump, the former president seized on the idea after an Oval Office meeting with Bret Giroir. The latter was serving as the assistant secretary for health.
According to the excerpt, Giroir attended the meeting in a full dress uniform and suggested putting “lead to target” to halt the flow of drugs across the border.
Afterward, Trump “raised it several times, eventually asking a stunned Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether the United States could indeed bomb the labs,” writes Haberman, who is renown for her extensive contacts in Trump’s circle.
According to Haberman, Trump was confused afterward about why Giroir, a former four-star Navy admiral, had worn his uniform to the meeting.
“The response from White House aides was not to try to change Trump’s view, but to consider asking Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore,” Haberman writes.
The extracts are the latest in a series of revelations from the book, which is scheduled for publication in October. In previous excerpts, Haberman writes that Trump had said he’d refuse to leave the White House after his 2020 defeat and accidentally may have admitted taking government records after leaving office, which is now the subject of an FBI investigation.
The book supports previous claims by Esper that he had resisted Trump’s suggestion to bomb Mexico in the summer of 2020, who said Trump had claimed it could be done “quietly.”