Why the firing of Mark Esper is just the start of a very wild 72 days

On Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump fired his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, via tweet.

Which, well, wasn’t terribly surprising. Esper had been on Trump’s naughty list for months — ever since he opposed using the military to crack down on sometimes-violent protests that broke out in major American cities following the death of George Floyd in May.