Then-president
Donald Trump sent a secret memo to the
Pentagon after he lost the election pushing them to withdraw US troops stationed around the world, according to a new report.
One of Mr Trump's closest aides, John McEntee, handed a handwritten note to retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor on 9 November 2020, saying: “This is what the president wants you to do.”
The note said to “get us out” of
Afghanistan,
Iraq and
Syria. It instructed the Colonel to “complete the withdrawal from
Germany,” and to “get us out of
Africa,” according to new reporting by
Axios.
Col Macgregor, who had just been offered the post of senior adviser to acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller, with only ten weeks left of Mr Trump’s term in office, told Mr McEntee he didn’t think such a drastic move would be possible before the president’s term was up.
“Then do as much as you can,” Mr McEntee said, according to Axios.
A short memo was delivered by a courier to the office of Mr Miller two days later with instructions from Mr Trump to withdraw all US forces from
Somalia by 31 December 2020
and all troops from Afghanistan by 15 January 2021. It was Mr Miller’s third day as Defence secretary after the firing of
Mark Esper.
The top military leaders were horrified by the orders, Axios reported. Neither
White House counsel
Pat Cipollone nor national security advisor
Robert O'Brien appeared to know where the orders had come from.
The memo had Mr Trump’s signature, but not even the staffers whose job it was to vet all the paper that got to the desk of the president knew where it had come from.
National security leaders came to understand that Mr Trump himself was trying to conduct military policy under the radar,
according to Axios.