Mark Esper Says US Officials Stopped Trump’s ‘Dangerous’ Plans ‘That Could Have Taken The Country in a Dark Direction’

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper reiterated to 60 Minutes on Sunday that during his time in the Trump administration, he had to prevent “dangerous things that could have taken the country in a dark direction.”

Esper, whose forthcoming book A Sacred Oath makes a number of allegations about former President Donald Trump — including that he asked about shooting Black Lives Matter protesters and wanted missile strikes to “destroy the drug labs” in Mexico — told 60 Minutes that he thinks “it’s important to our country” that the American people understand what unfolded during Trump’s presidency.

According to a transcript of the interview provided by CBS, Esper told correspondent Norah O’Donnell, “it’s important to our country, it’s important to the republic, the American people, that they understand what was going on in this very consequential period — the last year of the Trump administration.”

“And to tell the story about things we prevented: really bad things, dangerous things that could have taken the country in a dark direction,” he added.

“What kind of terrible things did you prevent?” O’Donnell asked.

“At various times during…the last year of the administration, you know, folks in the White House are proposing to take military action against Venezuela, to strike Iran,” Esper replied. “At one point, somebody propose we blockade Cuba.”

“These ideas would happen it seemed every few weeks,” he continued. “Something like this would come up and we’d have to swat ’em down.”

Asked who “swat ’em down” referred to, Esper said it was mostly him, though he had “good support” from Gen. Mark Milley.

Esper said he and Milley developed a system called “the Four No’s” — meaning “the four things we had to prevent from happening between then and the election.”

“One was no strategic retreats, no unnecessary wars, no politicization of the military, and no misuse of the military,” he said. “And so, as we went through the next five to six months, that became the metric by which we would measure things.”

Watch the video above, via CBS.