But Trump was adamant: He wanted the storied 82nd Airborne, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the military’s elite crisis responder, to arrive in Washington before sunset when a protest was planned in Lafayette Square, the seven-acre park between the White House and St. John’s Church. Esper explained to Trump the 82nd was trained to take the fight to the enemy with the biggest, most modern weapons. They were not trained in crowd control and civil unrest. They were exactly the wrong troops for the job.
