President Trump wanted to deploy 10,000 troops to control protests in Washington, D.C., this week, according to officials familiar with the matter, the Washington Post and CBS News reported.
According to a senior Pentagon official, Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley advised against the deployment in an oval office meeting Monday.
“We need to get control of the streets. We need 10,000 troops up here [in Washington]. I want it right now,” Trump said, according the Pentagon official, the Post reported.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis penned a cutting statement in The Atlantic this week offering a blistering rebuke of Trump’s handling of Monday night’s protests in Washington and elsewhere in the nation.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the caucus’s most moderate members, on Thursday sharply rebuked the president by praising an Mattis’s critique, calling it “true and honest and necessary and overdue.”
Murkowski told reporters on Thursday that she was “struggling” with if she could support Trump.