Gen. Kellogg slams 'garbage' claims by Mark Esper: 'Shouldn't have been Defense Secretary'

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Gen. Keith Kellogg slams ‘garbage’ claims by Mark Esper

Gen. Keith Kellogg on former Defense Secretary Mark Esper claiming he felt obligated to remain a Trump cabinet member in order to ‘push back against the bad ideas.’

Fox News contributor Gen. Keith Kellogg slammed former Defense Secretary Mark Esper for making "garbage" claims about standing up against then-President Trump for "undermining" American institutions. Kellogg, former national security adviser to VP Mike Pence, said on "The Brian Kilmeade Show" Tuesday he's "frustrated" by Esper's characterizations and Esper should not have been chosen for the job.

ESPER SAYS HE DIDN’T QUIT DESPITE TRUMP CONCERNS SO HE COULD ‘PREVENT BAD THINGS’ FROM HAPPENING TO COUNTRY

GEN. KEITH KELLOGG: That's garbage. I was really frustrated when I was watching him with Bret Baier last night. My frustration is like, come on, that's not the president I know. That's not the president I was associated with. And let me just give you one example. When he talked about, well, we're going to talk about putting missiles on the cartels in Mexico. Yeah, we talked about it, but it was a full range of options we talked about at the time. We actually talked with the Mexican government about this. They had no control over the cartels. And oh, by the way, I said it to Mark Esper, hey, look, remember, more Americans have died in the last year than we've had on record. Only 15 states this year did not show an increase in drug deaths. Where did that come from? From Mexico, from the cartels. They are an attack on America and the president wants to defend America. Esper didn't do his job. 

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I just think it's really unfortunate. He shouldn't have been [Secretary of Defense]. I don't think he was the proper [Secretary of Defense] at the time, and I think he showed his true colors. … I think he was ineffective … I don't think he displayed very good leadership. I was in a lot of Oval Office meetings with Mark Esper and he would always pull a punch. He would never, in my opinion, stand up to the president and say, this is what I really believe. He was always like, well, you know, maybe we could do this. He was never forceful. There were people who were very forceful in the administration. And I saw them stand up and say, this is what they really believed. I don't think Esper said what he really believed out there.

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