Trump’s rebuke of McMaster was months in the making
For a few weeks in late November, as speculation over whether President Donald Trump would fire his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, reached a fever pitch, Trump and his chief of staff, John Kelly, also considered pushing out another top national security official: H.R. McMaster.
McMaster, the national security adviser who succeeded Michael Flynn — Trump’s first choice for the job, who resigned amid controversy within a month of taking office — has never quite clicked with the president, according to six senior White House officials. He is disciplined and focused, and has frequently clashed with Trump, who loves small talk and meanders from one subject to another.
Their strained relationship was on rare public display over the weekend when the president chastised his national security adviser for telling a crowd at the Munich Security Conference that evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”
“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Trump tweeted. “Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”
The president’s chiding of McMaster marked the first public break between the two, whose clashes and disagreements have heretofore taken place behind closed doors.
“It is certainly not only far from ideal, but it is antithetical to the idea of a national security adviser” who typically has a close personal relationship with the president, said David Rothkopf, the author of “Running the World,” a history of the National Security Council.
McMaster is by no means alone among Trump advisers who have been publicly rebuked by the president or whom he has considered firing, even without taking action.
“This president muses aloud on Twitter and to friends who talk to the news media,” said Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University, who served on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “Most presidents are much more circumspect in settings where they think it might reach the public.”
Back in November, Trump and a small circle of senior aides involved in the conversation about McMaster’s fate, including Kelly, ultimately decided to keep McMaster in place. Among their reasons for doing so: Removing him would have launched them on a search for the president’s third national security adviser in a year, and Trump and Kelly could not agree on a replacement, according to a senior administration official.
Trump, according to two administration officials, was looking to tap former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, whose frequent Oval Office visits ended when Kelly became chief of staff last summer. Kelly opposed his appointment, according to those officials.
The discussions about replacing McMaster, reported by POLITICO for the first time, are a reflection of just how tumultuous his relationship with the president has been since he took the job just a year ago.
Trump has continuously chafed at McMaster’s “rat-a-tat” briefing style, according to a senior White House aide, who likened it to machine-gun fire. The president at one point gestured toward the general in the midst of a lengthy briefing and said to others in the room, “Look at this guy, he’s so serious!”
“McMaster is very much, ‘OK sir, here’s the point, here’s the takeaway, here’s my point of view, and here are the things you need to decide by the end of today,’ ” said Tom Ricks, a columnist for the veterans’ news site Task & Purpose and the author of six books on military affairs.
The National Security Council has worked best when the president and his national security adviser are personally close, according to David Rothkopf, who cited Jimmy Carter’s relationship with Zbigniew Brzezinski and George H.W. Bush’s relationship with Brent Scowcroft as the best examples.
McMaster does not have that relationship with Trump, several National Security Council officials say. Trump’s national security adviser has told his more politically adept colleagues that he struggles to communicate with his boss, and has solicited their advice on how better to connect. At least one official urged him to simplify and condense his briefings and to present the president with fewer options when it comes to decision-making.
Perhaps even more problematic for McMaster, though, is that he has also run afoul of Kelly, who routinely looks for advice from Defense Secretary James Mattis, whom he served under in the Iraq War. McMaster has at times sided with the more conservative members of the president’s national security team and against Mattis and Kelly.
On the subject of Russian meddling, a source close to McMaster says the general has hewed carefully to the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the election, eschewing pressure from the president to say that there was no collusion by members of the Trump campaign and that Russian interference didn’t have a decisive impact on the election results.
Last February, when he accepted the job, it was an unexpected turn in McMaster’s Army career. He wasn’t Trump’s first or second choice for the post, but was offered the job after Trump dismissed Michael Flynn and Robert Harward, a retired Navy SEAL and Mattis favorite whom the president first asked to replace Flynn, turned it down.
“For McMaster, this is all an unexpected phase in his career,” Ricks said. McMaster has told associates he may retire, but other jobs may open up for him, too.
Ricks added: “By becoming the Army general that Trump knows best, he becomes almost the leading candidate to become the next chief of staff of the Army. So I think the strategy for McMaster has been, keep your head down, do what you need to do to keep this job and wait for another Army job to open up. It would be an extraordinary third act for a military career that has repeatedly been in danger.”’
Annie Karni contributed reporting.