Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger and this week we are talking to former secretary of defense Mark Esper about his new book a sacred oath memoirs of a secretary of defense during extraordinary times.

And I think it's worth just running through a little bit of secretary Esper's bio before we jump into the conversation.

As a West Point graduate joined the United States Army as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division. He joined the Trump administration as the 23rd Secretary of the Army and then was confirmed as the 27th Secretary of Defense with a 90 to 8 vote.

He was fired on November 9th 2020 by the president.

Let's dive right in to Secretary Esper. This is going to be an interesting conversation because you and I in some ways have had very similar experiences in other ways I'm very confident we haven't but we share.

We share an experience of going into the Trump administration and I'd like for at least the first part of this conversation to try to allow our listeners to understand what that was like.

You know you've written a book about it and I think that goes a long way for folks to understand the struggle and the tradeoffs and what that felt like day to day.

And so that's my hope for this conversation. Let's let's see if we can if we can do that.

You go into the administration. You have a lucrative career. You're doing just fine. You're at Raytheon. You've served already in the Bush administration.

Why did you say yes given everything you'd seen in 2016 for instance.

I'm a question Sarah and first of all thanks for having me on your show today. Look I've been doing public service since the age of 18 when I decided to go to West Point and become a cadet and eventually serve a career in the United States Army.

So for me it's been about public service and serving my country and most of my career has been involved in public service either in uniform or out of uniform.

I come in and become secretary of the army for somebody who you know who saw the army from all angles not just active duty, the garden reserve as well and not just peace but wartime.

I thought would be an incredible opportunity opportunity for me to give back to my country once again.

And you know so as I've been saying recently wasn't about serving Donald Trump or serving the Republican Party or serving a conservative philosophy that I believe in by the way.

It's about serving your country and that's why myself and I think many others I'll throw you in as well kind of decide to serve in 2016 and for me to take the next promotion up to become secretary of defense.

So look what your country calls I think we have an obligation to answer and some people decided not to I respect that but many others decided to serve in Trump administration.

I would always expect reciprocal respect for that as well.

And so you join at the nearly the beginning of the administration and what at that point were your hopes and fears for a president Trump because that's something that I had thought a lot about.

I had voted for him in 2016.

I had in fact worked for a campaign against him and at the same time he had won and I as you said right I felt a duty to serve if I thought that I could be helpful to my country at that point.

And at the same time I think I was fairly realistic about the unknowns the known unknowns about a Trump presidency.

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