CNN
—
Until now, Lt. Gen. HR McMaster has remained tight-lipped about his time in the Trump White House. McMaster has served with distinction in major American conflicts over the past few decades: the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War, but as McMaster recounts in his new book, At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, his final tour of duty was in some ways his most demanding: serving as national security adviser to a notoriously mercurial president.
In his scathing and insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes the Oval Office meetings as “exercises in sycophancy,” in which Trump’s advisers flattered the president by saying things like, “Your instincts are always right” or “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” Trump himself, on the other hand, said “absurd” things like, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs in Mexico?” or “Why don’t we take out the entire North Korean army during one of their parades?”
McMaster’s book, which focuses on Trump’s tenure as commander in chief, comes at a particularly opportune time when many Americans are seriously considering whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would make a better commander in chief.
In her acceptance speech for her presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Harris sought in part to demonstrate her record on national security. For example, she spoke about the war in Gaza and said that as president she would stand firmly behind the U.S. alliance with Israel to “ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Harris also said Palestinians have “their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.” With that speech, Harris sought to draw a fine line between Americans who strongly oppose the war – many of them in her own party – and those who fully support Israel.
McMaster provides unique details on Trump’s approach to foreign policy, and like his successor as National Security Advisor, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who wrote scathingly about the former president in a 2020 book, his account is unlikely to reassure U.S. allies about the prospects of a second Trump term.
In addition to being a highly decorated officer, McMaster also holds a doctorate in history. His first book, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, told the grim story of how America’s top generals told President Lyndon Johnson only what they thought he wanted to hear about the Vietnam War, rather than giving him their best military advice on the course of the conflict and the full range of policy options available to their commander in chief.
McMaster would not have made the same mistake after Trump appointed him his national security adviser in February 2017. He writes, “I knew that to do my duty, I would have to tell Trump things he didn’t want to hear.” That helps explain why McMaster lasted just over a year in office. (Disclosure: I’ve known McMaster professionally since 2010, when he led an anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan.)
One issue was particularly sensitive for Trump: Russia. McMaster astutely observes: “I wish Trump could separate the question of Russian election manipulation from the legitimacy of his presidency. He could have said, ‘Yes, they attacked the election. But Russia doesn’t care who wins our elections. What they want to do is play Americans off against each other…’ McMaster writes that the “fragility” of Trump’s ego and “his deep sense of hurt” would never allow him to make such a distinction.
McMaster felt it was his “duty” to point out to Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin “was not and never would be a friend of Trump’s.” McMaster warned Trump that Putin was “the best liar in the world” and would try to “manipulate” Trump to get what he wanted, using “ambiguous promises of a ‘better relationship.'”
The straw that broke the camel’s back and ended McMaster’s tenure in the White House was apparently his public statement on February 17, 2018, at the Munich Security Forum – the annual meeting of senior Western foreign policy officials – that the indictment of a group of Russian intelligence officers for their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was “irrefutable” evidence of Russian interference in that election.
Trump tweeted shortly thereafter: “General McMaster forgot to say that the outcome of the 2016 election was not influenced or changed by the Russians…” When the commander in chief began publicly castigating him on Twitter, it was clear that McMaster would not remain in the White House much longer.
McMaster’s portrayal of the Trump team is not pretty. Steve Bannon, Trump’s “chief strategist” at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, is portrayed as a “subservient court jester” who “preyed on Trump’s fears and sense of distress … with stories, mostly about who was after him and what he could do to ‘strike back.'”
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis were often at loggerheads with Trump, McMaster says. Tillerson, who previously ran Exxon, is portrayed as inaccessible to top officials in Trump’s administration, while Mattis is described as an obstructionist. McMaster writes that Tillerson and Mattis viewed Trump as “dangerous” and interpreted their roles as if “Trump was a stopgap and anyone who helped him was an adversary.” Trump himself also contributed to the disruption: “He enjoyed and contributed to interpersonal drama in the White House and throughout the administration.”
Moreover, McMaster disagreed with his boss on several key foreign policy issues. McMaster lists these issues as “allies, authoritarian regimes, and Afghanistan.” Trump denigrated American allies, whom he viewed as “parasites”; he embraced authoritarian rulers, whom McMaster despised; and while Trump largely considered Afghanistan a lost cause, McMaster saw a path forward for the country and pushed for greater U.S. involvement there, while blocking Bannon’s ludicrous proposal to hand over the running of the Afghan war to American private military contractors.
McMaster acknowledges Trump’s Syria and China problems
McMaster does give Trump credit for making some sensible foreign policy decisions. Unlike President Barack Obama, who hesitated over his own “red line” when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against civilians, Trump acted decisively when Assad used chemical weapons in early April 2017, killing dozens of civilians. Trump responded by ordering airstrikes on the Syrian air base from which the chemical attack was launched.
And on the most important foreign policy issue, China, McMaster concluded that Trump made the right choices. McMaster was responsible for Trump’s 2017 national security strategy, which took a tougher public stance on China than those of previous administrations. He accused the Chinese of stealing “hundreds of billions of dollars” worth of American intellectual property each year and noted that China is “building the most capable and best-funded military in the world after our own.” Briefed by McMaster on the new national security strategy, Trump responded, “That’s fantastic,” and called for similar language in his upcoming speeches.
The attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, appears to have marked a decisive break with Trump for McMaster. In his 2020 book “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World,” he avoided direct criticism of his former commander-in-chief.
In contrast, McMaster writes in his new book that Trump’s “ego and self-love drove him, after his 2020 election defeat, to abandon his oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution,’ the highest obligation of a president.” McMaster adds, “The attack on the U.S. Capitol has tarnished our image, and it will take a long-term effort to restore what Donald Trump, his supporters, and those who encouraged them took from us that day.”
So what might all this mean for a second Trump term, if one comes? The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Project outlines plans to replace many career diplomats and intelligence officials with Trump loyalists. These loyalists would likely tell Trump exactly what he wants to hear, rather than give him their unvarnished assessment of the U.S. national security problems, which is the proper job of American security professionals.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but the fact that CNN found that at least 140 people who worked for Trump are involved in the project speaks for itself. And in a second Trump term, there probably wouldn’t be any McMasters telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear; in fact, that’s the whole point of Project 2025, which seeks to replace up to 50,000 federal government employees with Trump loyalists.
