that he was pushing back at times according to some of the antidotes but he was largely pushing back against some of the people surrounding president trump, and less against president trump himself. so, it s hard to know whether that moniker of yesper, was really accurate. enough thing i d point out about mark yesper, he came in as the secretary of the army and then of course we had secretary mattis who was fired in december after secretary yesper had been at the helm of the army for a number of months. it was widely known that mark esper basically lobbied or campaign for the job to be secretary of defense. at that point, president trump had been in office for sometime, for more than a year it was well known sort of how he operated, how s administration operated. and yet mark esper still want to take over the pentagon serve as the cabinet secretary under president trump s administration. so, you know he knew he was when he was getting into, and
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Secretary of Defense Mark Esper testifies during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on July 9 in Washington, D.C. Greg Nash/Pool/Getty Images
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been terminated, President Trump wrote in a tweet, and will be replaced by Christopher C. Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Chris will do a GREAT job, Trump tweeted shortly after noon. Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.
Sources say Esper already had a resignation letter ready to go because Trump threatened to fire him in June over a disagreement about using active duty troops to quell street protests and had recently updated it.
demonstrations. mark yesper? did you call him yesper? oh, okay, some people call him yesper. reporter: esper hated the idea he was seen as a yes-man, telling the military times in an interview published just after he was fired, who s pushed back more than anybody? name another cabinet secretary that s pushed back. have you seen me on a stage saying, under the exceptional leadership of blah-blah-blah, we have blah-blah-blah-blah? it comes as team trump is challenging the election results in several states. this election is not over, far from it. reporter: but they ve presented no credible evidence of vote fraud, as the republican lieutenant governor of georgia told cnn today we ve not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet. reporter: most republicans in congress are staying on the sidelines, not yet acknowledging that joe biden won, but also not repeating the president s false allegations. the president has every right to look into allegations and