Who Is Mark Esper? Narrated By Mohanad Elshieky | NowThis

Описание: That’s Mark Esper, a former top lobbyist at Raytheon, the giant defense contractor, and our current Secretary of Defense. He’s second in command to the President, charged with leading all our armed forces. This is a little story about a high powered lobbyist turned guy who stands to benefit from his former lobbying.
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Mark Thomas Esper was born in 1964 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, home of the Big Mac. Esper is a graduate of the famous 1986 class of West Point, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, among other Trump administration officials. After West Point, Esper served in the Gulf War. He received the Bronze Star and a combat infantryman badge for his service in Iraq. He served more than a decade on active duty.

In 1996, Esper became Chief of Staff at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank funded by political mega donors like Rebekah Mercer and Betsy DeVos. Later, he worked as a senior policy advisor for Senator Chuck Hagel, a guy who voted for the war in Iraq. Hagel would later be hired by the Obama administration to serve as our country’s Secretary of Defense.

Esper would go on to work in the George W. Bush administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy at the Pentagon.

In 2010, Esper was hired as vice president of government relations at Raytheon. And now, Mark Esper is the Secretary of Defense. One interesting sidebar: Esper was confirmed two days before Trump, according to a whistleblower, asked Ukraine to quote “do us a favor” and investigate his political rival the Bidens, and if they didn’t, he would withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid. Just an hour and forty five minutes after the phone call on July 25th, Trump welcomed Mark Esper in a full honors ceremony on the Pentagon’s parade field.

During Esper’s confirmation hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on him to recuse himself from matters involving Raytheon. Esper is in charge of the military’s budget, which stands at $738 billion.

It’s unclear whether or not Esper will work closely with Raytheon throughout the rest of his time in the Pentagon. After he leaves the government, he might spin around once more in the revolving door, all the way back to a giant defense contractor, who might then be in a better place because of the work he accomplished while in the government. Raytheon’s stock surged by 1.5% after the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani. And a President with Twitterer fingers will only fatten Esper’s already fat wallet.

For more On Mark Esper and other U.S. politicians, watch our weekly series Who Is?

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‘Who Is’ is a weekly miniseries, narrated by celebrities, that explores the people behind the Trump administration, and their complicated often salacious histories.

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