Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Who is Mark Esper?

He's the recently fired Secretary of Defense.

And he's another example of the revolving door.

- Click here for his Wikipedia entry

Mark Thomas Esper is a U.S. politician and businessman who served as the 27th United States secretary of defense from July 2019 to November 2020. He was a defense contractor lobbyist before joining the Donald Trump administration.

A West Point graduate, Esper joined the U.S. Army and served as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division. He was deployed and saw active service in the Gulf War and subsequently served in the Army National Guard. After leaving military service, he was a Senate staffer, chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, and Vice President for Government Relations at Raytheon.

In 2017, he joined the Trump administration as the 23rd United States secretary of the Army. Esper assumed the office of acting Secretary of Defense in 2019 and was confirmed as 27th secretary of defense by the United States Senate with a vote of 90–8 shortly afterwards.

Timeline: 

1986: Graduated West Point - infantry officer during Gulf War
1995: Master's Degree from Harvard
1996 - 1998: Chief of Staff at Heritage Foundation
1998 - 2002: Staffer in Senate committees on Foreign Relations and Government Affairs
2002 - 2004: W Bush Administration Deputy Assistant of Defense for negotiations policy
2004 - 2006: Senate: director for security affairs under Bill Frist
2006 - 2007: Executive Vice President at Aerospace Industries Association
2007 - 2008: National Policy Director for Senator Fred Thomson's presidential campaign
2008 - 2010: Executive Vice President for Global Intellectual Property Center
2008 - 2010: Voce President for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
2010 - 2017: Vice President of Government Relations at Raytheon
2017 - 2019: Secretary of the Army
2019 - 2020: Secretary of Defense

The dude gets around