A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times – An Instant New York Times Bestseller: A Pentagon Insider's Tumultuous Years Under President Trump

by Mark T. Esper

operationalize

This action was about subtlety, something for which Trump was not known.

Leaks were a chronic problem in the administration. Much of the information being disclosed to the media at the time seemed to be coming from the White House and was focused on internal policy disputes—Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela, for example.

The individual motivations for the leaks ranged from advancing a preferred policy outcome to enhancing the leaker’s own role or credentials to currying favor with the president. It was a noxious behavior learned from the top. The president was the biggest leaker of all.

Across the room from where he sat to eat lunch, a large TV hung on the wall about fifteen feet away. It was constantly on, playing Fox News, which meant that conversations were often interrupted when Trump saw news stories that interested him. In midsentence the president would stop talking, raise his left hand in a gesture to suspend the conversation, reach down to the table for the remote control with his right hand, and immediately raise the volume—listening for a few seconds, and then commenting on what he just heard. It was very predictable.

which many consider left leaning—buttressed

Which conservatives call left leaning. More objective assessments rate them as centrist.

With Congress already having spent $3 trillion on COVID, and the pandemic raging across the country, I concurred, adding there was “no amount of money that we could credibly spend on vaccine development that wouldn’t have a high return on investment.”

In Barr’s view, Maduro had “weaponized” cocaine to undermine the United States. Illicit drugs were “killing millions of Americans” and harming communities across the country. It was hard to find a family who didn’t have a friend or relative somehow affected by this scourge. “Stopping the flow of drugs, and specifically out of Venezuela, is what we should focus on,” Barr argued.

The notable omissions here are ignoring the demand side and big pharma's pushing of opioids and fentanyl.

Our goal was to increase interdiction efforts through a 65 percent increase in Navy ships, Coast Guard vessels, and airborne reconnaissance, with more than one thousand additional military personnel to bolster the counternarcotics mission.

In all this, I see no consideration of whether these interdiction efforts are cost effective, or indeed have any effect at all in reducing the harm caused by drugs.

I would later tell folks that the Gallagher and Vindman examples were best understood as Trump pressing his thumb into a soccer ball.

Of course, when he presses his switchblade into the soccer ball there may be some lasting damage.