As demonstrators protesting racial injustice filled the streets around the White House in 2020, then-President Donald Trump suggested in an Oval Office meeting they be shot, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper writes in a new book.

According to Axios, Esper writes in “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times,” which is scheduled to be released May 10, that Trump asked: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

The Oval Office meeting, according to Esper, was held in June 2020 when protesters were gathering around the country in the wake of George Floyd dying under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

Esper writes that it “was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.”

“The good news — this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper adds. “The bad news — I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”

It’s not the first such accusation about Trump. Last year in his book, “Frank, We Did Win This Election,” Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender wrote that Trump on multiple occasions suggested to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley that the way for law enforcement and military to handle protesters around the country was to “crack their skulls,” “beat the f*** out of them” and “shoot them in the leg — or maybe the foot.”

According to Axios, as part of a Pentagon security review, Esper’s book had to be cleared by nearly three dozen 4-star generals, senior civilians and some Cabinet members — some of whom witnessed what Esper did.

Spectrum News has reached out to Trump’s office for comment. The book’s publisher, William Morrow, did not immediately respond to an email seeking confirmation about Axios’ reporting on the excerpt. 

Trump fired Esper less than a week after the 2020 presidential election. Esper had clashed with Trump months earlier by refusing to deploy active-duty troops to control protests. 

A description from the publisher about “A Sacred Oath” says that, during Esper’s tenure as Pentagon chief, the White House was “seemingly bent on breaking accepted norms and conventions for political advantage.”

“A Sacred Oath is Secretary Esper’s unvarnished and candid memoir of those extraordinary and dangerous times, and includes events and moments never before told,” the description says.