Patterico's Pontifications

5/2/2022

Esper: Trump Asked About Shooting Protesters

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:30 am



He could order someone to stand in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose voters:

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper charges in a memoir out May 10 that former President Trump said when demonstrators were filling the streets around the White House following the death of George Floyd: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

That seems like the kind of thing you’d save for a memoir rather than informing voters about it ahead of an election, huh, Mr. Esper?

20 Responses to “Esper: Trump Asked About Shooting Protesters”

  1. Upon learning of this GOP voters realized that Trump was unfit for the Oval Office and backed away from him. Within a few days he was no longer the 2024 front runner and leader of the Republican Party.

    Who am I kidding. This is what most of his supporters wanted.

    Time123 (52b025)

  2. We probably would not hearing about it now if we did not have a Democratic administration and Esoer had not gotten a new gig with the military industrial complex. Procurement: It has more than one meaning.

    nk (cbd295)

  3. Who am I kidding. This is what most of his supporters wanted.

    They are not unique. Plenty of leftsts who want a Mao who is unafraid of liquidating the capitalists.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  4. Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office watching on the screen while son Baron pilots the drone. Dropping flashbangs.

    Here is a thread on how Ukrainians are attaching anti personnel munitions to their drones.
    They are 3D printing fins and dropping them accurately from consumer drones at 900ft… a height where you can’t see or hear the drone.
    They note it is a Secret Service nightmare

    https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1520561969153073153

    steveg (a9183d)

  5. We probably would not be hearing about it now if we did not have a Democratic administration and Esper a new job with a defense supplier looking for a piece of $2 billion in defense spending

    nk (fa654d)

  6. Testing the filter: Procurement.

    nk (fa654d)

  7. This is really part and parcel of the Trump “attraction” to those who felt dispossessed by 30 years of globalization and focus on the college-educated. They are not particularly concerned about subtlety or comity, they wanted action and Trump convinced them that he was their guy.

    That Trump was all hat and no cattle is what should be emphasized, not that he was rude, crude or socially unacceptable (which to them is a plus).

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  8. The 1970 Kent State shootings were not unpopular among Nixon’s supporters; many of them said “Good” after years of frustration with student-held demos and riots against the Vietnam War. The press and the Democrats were outraged of course, and it cost the Republicans a lot of centrist votes at the midterms. Nixon still won a huge landslide victory in 1972.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  9. *student-led

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  10. Had Trump really said that, Esper would’ve leaked that out a long assed time ago.

    OT: @JVW
    THIS. Is the result:
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/disneys-clash-with-florida-has-ceos-on-alert-11651440367

    whembly (7e0293)

  11. Whatever was said, it was not done. I’d love to see a book about what presidents said that was not done. The LBJ section would be particularly interesting.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  12. Whatever was said, it was not done. I’d love to see a book about what presidents said that was not done. The LBJ section would be particularly interesting.

    Who needs a book; listen to some tapes. There are some good one from LBJ but the king of the “what presidents said that was not done” club is The Big Dick. Those tapes are loaded with expletive deleted gems his staff never follow up on.

    DCSCA (772b07)

  13. TrumpWorld approves.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  14. Dustin, good story showing that targeting Disney based on their has had a chilling effect on others. Thank you for sharing

    Time123 (52b025)

  15. My usual reaction to something like this is “Why, of course he would” and then move on to something else. What Trump is is very obvious. Whether you like it, hate it, or don’t care — isn’t going to change. the only thing that changes it is if somebody perceives actual harm coming from Trump being Trump. I’m not sure what moves the needle on that.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  16. Yes, finding new fault with Trump is shooting fish in barrel.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  17. breaking news supreme court will overturn roe vs wade 5-4! Dred scott II great news unless your a wimp corporate establishment democrat. You mean now I have to do something other then whine with my cheese. The left will primary us with this. Call the whaaaambulence!

    asset (ab9f0c)

  18. Orange man bad. Liberal justice good.

    mg (8cbc69)

  19. From Justice Alito’s draft opinion, February, 2022:

    Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak,

    Worse than that. It was a result of afraud on the court.

    The court was told, and said in its opinion, that nobody much thought there was anything wrong with abortion until approximately the 1860s.

    https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/reproduction/roe_v_wade.htm (it is difficult to find the full text (free) online quickly

    [61] It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman’s life, are not of ancient or even of common-law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.

    1. Ancient attitudes. These are not capable of precise determination. We are told that at the time of the Persian Empire abortifacients were known and that criminal abortions were severely punished. *fn8 We are also told, however, that abortion was practiced in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era, *fn9 and that “it was resorted to without scruple.” *fn10 The Ephesian, Soranos, often described as the greatest of the ancient gynecologists, appears to have been generally opposed to Rome’s prevailing free-abortion practices. He found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother, and he resorted to abortion when, upon this standard, he felt the procedure advisable. *fn11 Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn. If abortion was prosecuted in some places, it seems to have been based on a concept of a violation of the father’s right to his offspring. Ancient religion did not bar abortion. *fn12

    [63] 2. The Hippocratic Oath. What then of the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession and that bears the name of the great Greek (460(?)-377(?) B. C.), who has been described as the Father of Medicine, the “wisest and the greatest practitioner of his art,” and the “most important and most complete medical personality of antiquity,” who dominated the medical schools of his time, and who typified the sum of the medical knowledge of the past? *fn13 The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation, but in any translation the content is clear: “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion,” *fn14 or “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” *fn15

    [64] Although the Oath is not mentioned in any of the principal briefs in this case or in Doe v. Bolton, post, p. 179, it represents the apex of the development of strict ethical concepts in medicine, and its influence endures to this day. Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome? The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory: *fn16 The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates’ day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, “echoes Pythagorean doctrines,” and “in no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity.” *fn17

    [65] Dr. Edelstein then concludes that the Oath originated in a group representing only a small segment of Greek opinion and that it certainly was not accepted by all ancient physicians. He points out that medical writings down to Galen (A. D. 130-200) “give evidence of the violation of almost every one of its injunctions.” *fn18 But with the end of antiquity a decided change took place. Resistance against suicide and against abortion became common. The Oath came to be popular. The emerging teachings of Christianity were in agreement with the Pythagorean ethic. The Oath “became the nucleus of all medical ethics” and “was applauded as the embodiment of truth.” Thus, suggests Dr. Edelstein, it is “a Pythagorean manifesto and not the expression of an absolute standard of medical conduct.” *fn19

    [66] This, it seems to us, is a satisfactory and acceptable explanation of the Hippocratic Oath’s apparent rigidity,

    [67] 3. The common law. It is undisputed that at common law, abortion performed before “quickening” — the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy *fn20 — was not an indictable offense. *fn21 The absence of a common-law crime for pre-quickening abortion appears to have developed from a confluence of earlier philosophical, theological, and civil and canon law concepts of when life begins. These disciplines variously approached the question in terms of the point at which the embryo or fetus became “formed” or recognizably human, or in terms of when a “person” came into being, that is, infused with a “soul” or “animated.” A loose consensus evolved in early English law that these events occurred at some point between conception and live birth. *fn22 This was “mediate animation.” Although Christian theology and the canon law came to fix the point of animation at 40 days for a male and 80 days for a female, a view that persisted until the 19th century, there was otherwise little agreement about the precise time of formation or animation. There was agreement, however, that prior to this point the fetus was to be regarded as part of the mother, and its destruction, therefore, was not homicide. Due to continued uncertainty about the precise time when animation occurred, to the lack of any empirical basis for the 40-80-day view, and perhaps to Aquinas’ definition of movement as one of the two first principles of life, Bracton focused upon quickening as the critical point. The significance of quickening was echoed by later common-law scholars and found its way into the received common law in this country.

    [68] Whether abortion of a quick fetus was a felony at common law, or even a lesser crime, is still disputed. Bracton, writing early in the 13th century, thought it homicide. *fn23 But the later and predominant view, following the great common-law scholars, has been that it was, at most, a lesser offense. In a frequently cited passage, Coke took the position that abortion of a woman “quick with child” is “a great misprision, and no murder.” *fn24 Blackstone followed, saying that while abortion after quickening had once been considered manslaughter (though not murder), “modern law” took a less severe view. *fn25 A recent review of the common-law precedents argues, however, that those precedents contradict Coke and that even post-quickening abortion was never established as a common-law crime. *fn26 This is of some importance because while most American courts ruled, in holding or dictum, that abortion of an unquickened fetus was not criminal under their received common law, *fn27 others followed Coke in stating that abortion of a quick fetus was a “misprision,” a term they translated to mean “misdemeanor.” *fn28 That their reliance on Coke on this aspect of the law was uncritical and, apparently in all the reported cases, dictum (due probably to the paucity of common-law prosecutions for post-quickening abortion), makes it now appear doubtful that abortion was ever firmly established as a common-law crime even with respect to the destruction of a quick fetus…..

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  20. Trump is no longer president.

    Trump will never be president again. His phenomenal energy for a man his age will run out (may already be). He may develop a health issue. Trump may not be alive in 2024.

    Trump’s “endorsements” mean little. The populist right will go on if Trump leaves the scene tomorrow.

    DN (f72143)


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