Member of the JOINT CHIEFS researched the 25th Amendment for Trump

One of the nation’s top military officers was so concerned about former President Donald Trump’s red-faced ‘tirade’ about Afghanistan that he began researching the 25th Amendment on removing a president from office, former Pentagon boss Mark Esper writes in his new book.

The development came after Trump made the ‘stupid’ decision to make false and ‘baseless’ claims about the military in front of the top assembled military chiefs during a White House meeting.

It was a performance Esper termed ‘reprehensible,’ and prompted side conversations among the military brass.

Esper wasn’t the only person present who was gobsmacked.

‘Months later, one of the officers present told me in a phone call that he went home that evening deeply concerned about what he had seen in his commander in chief,’ according to Esper.

‘The next morning, he said in a very sober tone, he started reading up on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and the role of the cabinet as a check on the president. He wanted to understand “what the Cabinet needed to consider” and what the process was,’ he writes.

The revelations are contained in Esper’s new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, in an excerpt obtained by DailyMail.com. 

News of the 25th Amendment talk of 25th Amendment talk within the upper reaches of the Pentagon comes just a day after revelations by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, authors of This Will Not Pass, that House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy discussed the 25th Amendment for removing Trump two days after January 6th – months after Esper’s conversation.

But McCarthy, who would soon return to the fold as a Trump loyalist, can be heard on tape saying the method would take ‘too long.’ 

Esper describes the encounter as taking place following a May 9, 2020 meeting on a Saturday at the White House.

‘How stupid of the president, I thought, to do something like this. To make false claims and baseless complaints about the capabilities and readiness of the U.S. military,’ Esper writes

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Trump carried out a red-faced ‘tirade’ against the military

Trump ended up firing Esper by tweet days after the 2020 elections

Trump also clashed with Defense Secretary James Mattis

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) can be heard on tape talking about the 25th Amendment days after Jan. 6th, but said it was ‘too slow’

It was ostensibly about China, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien were there, as were the joint chiefs, including the newly established Space Force.

Esper tried to dispense with the ‘dark cloud’ in the room by talking about the topic at hand.

‘Then all of a sudden Trump launched into a twenty-minute tirade. He wasn’t screaming, but he was clearly upset,’ Esper recounts. ‘He looked around the room as he spoke, red in the face at times, telling the group that “the great U.S. military isn’t as capable as you think.”‘

He also told them that ‘we put too much confidence in our allies despite them ripping us off,’ and that ‘we can’t even win in Afghanistan, a third-rate country,’ he wrote.

Then Trump took a turn toward ridiculing his former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who had resigned after his own run-ins with the president how had lauded his military career and called him by his ‘Mad Dog’ nickname the retired Marine general eschewed.

Esper’s memoir, A Sacred Oath, comes out next week

‘This last part cued himself to mock Jim Mattis again, imitating the former secretary of defense saying how “the Afghans are brave and they will fight.” Trump folded his arms across his chest and again dismissed Mattis as “the most overrated general ever,” Esper writes.

Trump reportedly used the same language to mock Mattis in an October 2019 meeting on Syria. 

According to Esper, he interjected, saying ‘There’s no doubt in my mind, Mr. President, that we can beat them.’

He also brought up the Army’s test of a hypersonic missile – a topic that Trump has mused about publicly.

‘Nevertheless, barely skipping a beat, he continued down his list of complaints, including his old favorite that “the U.S. Navy ships are ugly and broken,” followed by a quick recitation of the USS Ford’s flaws, and so on, and so on, and so on.’

 ‘I could barely get a word in defense,’ Esper writes.

He says the Joint Chiefs were ‘stone-faced’ and that he himself was ‘concerned.’

Esper was reduced to ‘ploys to arrest his behavior,’ but none seemed to work.  

‘For all the money being spent on the military—$2.5 trillion that I gave you to rebuild the military— you can’t fight. You can’t win,’ Trump vented. 

Trump appeared unable to listen to counter-arguments, stuck in ‘transit mode.’ 

Esper’s main immediate concern was how it would all affect senior military leaders.    

‘How stupid of the president, I thought, to do something like this. To make false claims and baseless complaints about the capabilities and readiness of the U.S. military to these officers — professionals who had spent their adult lives in uniform defending the country, risking them in many cases, and usually spending long periods away from their families in the process—was reprehensible.’

Trump would ultimately negotiate a withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, despite resistance from top military brass. President Joe Biden pulled out remaining forces early in his term in a chaotic withdrawal. 

Esper’s own exit coincided with a tumultuous period. Trump tweeted Nov. 9, 2020 that he had been ‘terminated,’ just days after the election that would put Joe Biden in office.

He was replaced by Christopher Miller as Acting Secretary of Defense. 

According to reports at the time, Esper already had a resignation letter after a summer spat with Trump over using the military to put down domestic protests. 

According to another excerpt from Esper’s book, which is out May 10, Trump also spoke to him about having the military shoot protesters during George Floyd protets.

‘Can’t you just shoot them?’ Trump asked, according to Esper. ‘Just shoot them in the legs or something?’

The 25th Amendment establishes a mechanism for the president a majority of the cabinet to vote for his temporary removal by issuing a ‘written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’

According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book, Peril, Milley ‘was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election’ in 2020.

Trump was going after Esper and his Defense team even when Esper was still in office. 

He said in September 2020: ‘I’m not saying the military is in love with me; the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of these wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.’