US President Donald Trump told his advisers at one point last week he wanted 10,000 troops to deploy to the Washington D.C. area to halt civil unrest over the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police, according to a senior US official.

The account of Trump’s demand during a heated Oval Office conversation on Monday shows how close the President may have come to fulfilling his threat to deploy active duty troops, despite opposition from Pentagon leadership.

At the meeting, defence secretary Mark Esper, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and attorney-general William Barr recommended against such a deployment, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The meeting was “contentious,” the official added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has since appeared satisfied with deployments by the National Guard, the option recommended by the Pentagon and a more traditional tool for dealing with domestic crises. Pentagon leaders scrambled to call governors with requests to send Guard forces to Washington. Additional federal law enforcement were mobilised, too.

But also key for Trump appears to have been Esper’s move to preposition — but not deploy — active duty soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and other units in the Washington D.C. area in case they were needed. Those troops have since departed.

“Having active duty forces available but not in the city was enough for the President for the time,” the official said.

Trump’s bid to militarise the US response to the protests has triggered a rare outpouring of condemnation from former US military officials, including Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and retired four-star generals who normally try to steer clear of politics.

Those comments reflect deep unease inside and outside the Pentagon with Trump’s willingness to inject the US military into a domestic race relations crisis following the killing of George Floyd, 46, who died on May 25 after a Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Floyd’s death has led to a wave of protests and national soul-searching over the country’s legacy of violence and mistreatment of African Americans and other minorities.

It has also led some Pentagon leaders of color to issue unprecedented statements about their experiences dealing with issues of race in the US military.

Esper publicly voiced his opposition on Wednesday to invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy active duty forces — remarks to reporters that did not go over well with either Trump or his top aides.

The senior US official said Trump yelled at Esper after that news conference.

As speculation swirled over whether the President might fire him, White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said Trump “remains confident in secretary Esper”.

“Secretary Esper has been instrumental in securing our nation’s streets and ensuring Americans have peace and confidence in the security of their places of business, places of worship, and their homes,” McEnany said in a statement.

Esper issued a memo on Tuesday reminding defence department personnel “we commit to protecting the American people’s right to freedom of speech and to peaceful assembly”.

Milley issued a similar statement reminding troops of their oath to the US Constitution, which protects the right to peaceful protests.

Those statements by Milley and Esper came after they took fierce criticism for using military planning terms like “battlespace” to describe American protest sites during a conference call with state governors that Trump hosted on Monday, a recording of which leaked.

At the time, the Pentagon was concerned that Trump might deploy active duty troops if the governors did not sufficiently employ the National Guard, the official said.

Esper and Milley have also faced criticism for accompanying Trump for a photo opportunity outside a church near the White House on Monday after police cleared the area by firing smoke grenades and chemical irritant “pepper balls” and charging into peaceful protesters.

Minneapolis mayor

The mayor of Minneapolis ran a gauntlet of angry, jeering protesters on Saturday after telling them he was opposed to their demands for de-funding the city police following George Floyd’s fatal encounter with law enforcement.

Mayor Jacob Frey, a former civil rights attorney who took office two years ago vowing to repair the police department’s strained relations with minorities, was showered with angry chants of “Go home, Jacob, go home,” and “Shame, shame,” as he stalked away through the crowd, head bowed.

Onlookers’ video of the spectacle went viral on social media on a day tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities across the country staged a twelfth straight day of protests demanding an end to racial bias and brutality in America’s criminal justice system.

Frey was first thrust into the national spotlight nearly two weeks ago, after cellphone footage emerged showing Floyd, a black man in handcuffs, lying face down in the street and struggling to breathe as a white policeman knelt on his neck.

The 38-year-old mayor immediately decried the deadly use of force in Floyd’s May 25 arrest as unjustified.

Within days, as street protests raged amid a storm of arson and looting that went largely unchecked by police, Frey drew criticism from some, including Trump, for doing too little to restore order. The mayor ultimately imposed a curfew to help quell the disturbances.

All four Minneapolis police officers implicated in Floyd’s death have since been arrested, including Derek Chauvin, the white officer seen pinning Floyd’s neck to the ground, who is charged with murder.

But demonstrators in Minneapolis and elsewhere have since refocused their demands from merely seeking justice for Floyd’s death to a quest for far-reaching police reforms.

Police legislation

Democrats led by black members of the US Congress are set to introduce legislation to combat police violence and racial injustice, including making it easier to sue officers who kill.