TWENTY
Esper left and called the director of the National Guard, General Joe Lengyel, who was the chief of the nearly 460,000 Army and Air National Guard.
“Joe, we need to get Guardsmen into the city, ASAP,” Esper said. “Who do I start calling?”
Esper called the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Eventually, he and Lengyel convinced at least ten states to send Guard units.
Esper did not tell them that Trump wanted to flood the city with active-duty forces if they did not move quickly.
Near 6 p.m., Esper headed to the FBI command center to meet up with Milley. They planned to visit the Guard in the streets, thank them, and get a feel for what was happening on the ground. Go to the scene, find out for themselves.
But on his way to the FBI, a call came in to Esper: “The president wants you at the White House.”
Once he arrived in the West Wing, Esper asked, “Where’s the meeting?”
Sir, there is no meeting.
What do you mean there is no meeting?
So Esper waited.
Around 6:30 p.m., U.S. Park Police led a group of law enforcement officers, in riot gear and on horseback, into the crowd, and began forcefully clearing protesters from Lafayette Square. While the push was planned days earlier with the intent of building a fence around the park, it quickly unraveled into a chaotic scene.
Washington, D.C., police officers used riot control devices, creating loud explosions, sparks and smoke. “Pepper balls” that irritate the eyes and nose were shot at protesters. Some officers pushed protesters to the ground. Others on horseback herded people away.
At 6:48 p.m., after the protesters were dispersed, Trump spoke for seven minutes in the Rose Garden at the White House. “I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters,” he said, pledging to control the “riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country.
“If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” he said, “then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.
“As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property.”
One of Trump’s low-level White House aides turned to Esper and other senior officials who had attended Trump’s speech and said, “Line up.”
“Line up for what?” Esper asked.
Well, sir, we are going to walk across Lafayette Square, the aide said. The president wants to go through the park and see St. John’s Church. He wants you all, he wants his cabinet members, to join him.
Milley had arrived in his camouflage uniform.
“We’re going to the church,” Trump told them.
Almost everyone at the White House that evening seemed to join in: Esper and Milley, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Barr, senior advisers, family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Trump aide Hope Hicks and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
It was one of the most photographed and videotaped parades of the Trump presidency.
Esper suddenly felt sick as he saw a crowd of reporters and cameras rush by, filming and flashing as the parade hustled through the park. Trump kept moving, pulling everything toward him like a magnet.
“We’ve been duped,” Esper said to Milley as they walked to the church. “We’re being used.”
Milley agreed completely.
Milley turned to his personal security chief and said, “This is fucked up and this is a political event and I’m out of here. We’re getting the fuck out of here. I’m fucking done with this shit.”
Milley peeled off from the group.
But it was too late for Milley to escape notice. He was photographed in his camouflages, looking dressed for battle. He also took a phone call that some interpreted as a call to coordinate the push against the protesters. It instead was to his wife, Hollyanne.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She had seen the scene on television. “Are you okay?”
Milley said he was fine, but he was not.
In 45 seconds, Milley realized he had made a mistake that threatened to compromise his most prized possession, forged over decades: his integrity and independence as the senior military officer in the United States of America.
Walking with Trump when he was on a political mission, even for a split second, was utterly wrong. This is my Road to Damascus moment, Milley thought, feeling as if he was looking into a personal abyss.
Milley was not at the church when Trump stood for about two minutes, holding a Bible uncomfortably and waving it around. But it did not matter. The damage was done.
The president had misused him and politicized the U.S military. They had become Trump’s pawns.
Esper, who recognized his political antennae were less sensitive than Milley’s, would have to deal with the inevitable fallout from standing and walking alongside the president as thousands of Americans gathered by the church, chanting and pleading for policing reforms.
But Esper was more worried the most highly regarded institution in the country, the finely tuned and proudly nonpartisan military machine, was in jeopardy of being swept into a political storm. The republic seemed a little wobbly. How could he calm things down? How could he break what could only be described as a fever?
“Bill! Bill! Bill!” Trump had yelled over at Barr at one point on the walk. “Come here!”
At that moment, Barr felt like he could sink into concrete. Unlike Milley, he was a political appointee who wanted to see Trump get some good press and win. But he knew this spectacle, which he had been told earlier would be a simple “outing” by the president, was utterly ridiculous. There was no other way to describe it.
He had a feeling for why Trump did it: He still felt embarrassment about going down into the White House bunker. He wanted to show strength.
To cap it off, Barr hesitated as he watched Trump walk back into the White House. He saw the uniformed branch of the Secret Service line up, in two straight lines, holding their shields. It looked like an honor guard, all the trappings of a showy military operation.
“I’m not going to walk through this fucking guard of honor,” Barr muttered.
Later that evening, Esper and Milley finally toured the city to check on the rest of the Guard. Dozens of National Guard troops in body armor—with their faces almost completely covered with gray masks and dark sunglasses—were later photographed on the Lincoln Memorial steps. They looked menacing, a militarized version of Trump’s law-and-order declaration.
“We’ve got to ratchet it down,” Milley said to Esper.
Esper could not agree more. He had brought a battalion, about 600 regular combat troops from the 82nd Airborne, to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland outside Washington. He was intentionally keeping them outside the city. But for how long would it hold? Trump’s fuse was lit—and he had already manipulated them once.
The next day, June 2, Milley issued a one-page memo, “SUBJECT: Message to the Joint Force,” to the chiefs of all the military services and top combatant commands.
It was a reminder to the military of their duty, and a recentering for himself, one day after the chaos alongside Trump in Lafayette Square.
Near his signature, Milley scrawled out an additional message in longhand: “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America—we will stay true to that oath and the American people.”