‘I do not support invoking the insurrection act’: Mark Esper

On Wednesday, in light of the George Floyd protests, Defense Secretary Mark Esper stated that he does not agree with President Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act nor with the use of the military in U.S. cities. Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins The Final Round panel to discuss the latest.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Well, it looks like Defense Secretary Mark Esper is at odds with President Trump after expert said that he does not want active duty troops used in American cities. Rick Newman is following this story for us. And, Rick, of course Esper's comments come after President Trump has threatened to deploy the military to enforce order across the US.

RICK NEWMAN: Yes, Mark Esper, the defense secretary has now committed the grave sin of disloyalty to President Trump, because he's not 100% backing Trump's idea to bring active duty troops into the mix here. So there were some troops headed from Fort Bragg to the Washington DC area. And they have since turned around.

And Esper today, when someone asked him said, he does not support the use of active duty troops, which Trump has been calling for. Now that just so people understand, there's a big difference between governors calling in the National Guard, which does exist in part to help with domestic problems. That is part of their job, but it would have to be a really terror-- some kind of terrible situation to call in active duty troops.

So you can look at what's going on in some of the cities and say, yeah, maybe we've gotten to that point, but that's not really the time you would do it. And, of course, you'd risk confrontations between US troops and the US citizens they are supposed to protect. So that would be just a dreadful outcome.

In the military, at the pentagon, one of the things they care a lot about is upholding the professionalism of their troops. Everybody in the military has studied what happened to the army after the Vietnam War and how unpopular it was. And they spent a lot of-- they did a lot of work to rebuild the credibility of the armed forces. And they don't want to blow that by getting them involved in the situation here.

So the upshot, Sean, is I think we're seeing signals now that Mark Esper's first job as defense secretary is endangered when somebody asked the White House press secretary today does the president still have confidence in the defense secretary, she declined to say yes, which in Washington or in Trump world means Trump is pissed off.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah. Exactly. And going over that, I mean, we also know that Esper has also distanced himself from the photo that Trump used famously earlier this week outside the St. John Church in Washington DC.

And he was distancing himself from that. So you feel like that combined with this news over what Esper is saying about what using active duty troops on American cities is going to be I guess interesting just to hear what President Trump's or the Trump administration's response will be to all this here. And I'm sure that we'll hear from them pretty soon.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. Trump rolled Mark Esper, also General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chief, she completely rolled them by kind of hoodwinking them into that walk he took, while some sort of federal police that was not active duty troops, but it was some sort of federal police, were dispersing peaceful protesters so that they could get out of Trump's way. Especially-- it's really troubling to see Mark Milley in uniform. He was in fatigues going along on that walk.

And he has not said anything about it, but I can tell you that-- I used to cover the pentagon-- and especially among senior leadership, they are highly aware of the role that they place in civil military relations and not getting involved in domestic disputes. And I think Mark Milley's probably boiling over being used like that. And I could-- I mean, keep your eyes open for some resignations.

SEANA SMITH: Well, we certainly will. And, of course, we'll bring that to our viewers if, in fact, that does happen. Rick, thank you.