Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS in an interview broadcast Sunday he helped prevent a series of "dangerous things that could have taken the country in a dark direction" during his time in the Trump administration.

Driving the news: When CBS' Norah O'Donnell asked Esper during the "60 Minutes" interview for examples, he cited a proposal to "take military action against Venezuela," to "strike Iran" and, "at one point, somebody proposed we blockade Cuba."

Former President Donald Trump reportedly urged top military brass to shoot protesters who flooded the streets in the summer of 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd.

That’s according to a new book by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who recalls Trump asking deputies in a June 2020 Oval Office meeting, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

Police officers in Denver violated the rights of protesters during the huge 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd, a federal jury said Friday. As a result, 12 protesters were awarded a total of $14 million in damages after a three-week trial that lawyers involved in the case characterized as the first trial in a lawsuit that challenged police tactics during the 2020 protests that broke out across the country after the killing of Floyd.

Defense attorneys rested their case Monday in the federal civil rights trial of three former officers involved in George Floyd's death.

All three officers have testified about their points of view on May 25, 2020, when Floyd, a Black man, was fatally restrained. Closing arguments in the joint trial are set to begin Tuesday.

With each vantage point now on record, the jury and public now have more insight into the events before, during and after former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

When the first of the ex-cops who watched George Floyd die took the stand in court Tuesday, he testified that he and his fellow officers were trained to put their knees on suspect’s backs—and even possibly their necks. His defense attorney showed photos from police training depicting the controversial maneuver.

"Is this something that was typically taught at the academy when you were there?” former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao was asked by his attorney, Robert Paule, referring to the maneuver, according to FOX 9 reporter Rob Olson.

“Yes," Thao replied.

George Floyd’s death at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the summer of 2020 ignited a wave of protests across the country calling for major overhauls in the U.S. criminal justice system. 

The phrase "defund the police" not only became a rallying cry but served as a litmus test separating moderates from the progressive left. 

Kyle Rittenhouse broke down sobbing on the stand while testifying in his own defense on Wednesday, prompting the judge to call a ten-minute recess.

Rittenhouse began to sob and hyperventilate as he described the moment he fatally shot two attackers and wounded another during a protest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisc.

Mayor Jacob Frey (D) had barely begun his event on public safety when a woman confronted him about the violence that has erupted across the city in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.

The day before, a boy had been grazed by a stray bullet that pierced his bedroom wall while he was sleeping — one of more than 575 people injured by gunfire across Minneapolis this year.