Washington Post
The Washington Post is a major American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and widely read around the country. The newspaper has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. It employs around 800 journalists and had a 2015 daily circulation of 356,768. Its digital circulation was 1,000,000 in 2018.
Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013. Tensions between he and the newsroon have continued; in 2024 and 2025, multiple personnel resigned over the paper's non-endorsement of Kamala Harris and editorial changes advanced by Bezos.
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Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Mark T. Esper, who served Donald Trump as defense secretary, alleges in a new book that he witnessed the former president in the Oval Office suggesting that members of the military should shoot protesters “in the legs or something.” Esper suggests others were present during that meeting.
Trump denies it. He says those witnesses present would back him up.
As it turns out, this is something that Congress might investigate and try to settle, one way or the other. Will Democrats act?
The key revelation, which Esper detailed in an interview on CBS News on Sunday, supposedly took place during an Oval Office meeting about protests against police brutality in early June 2020. Trump ranted at aides, said they were all “f---ing losers” and suggested deploying 10,000 troops to the streets of Washington, D.C.
According to Esper, Trump said of the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something.”