H.R. McMaster
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Well, I think profound disappointment in that he would have that kind of an interpretation of how the war started. And I think it's really important at this stage to engage him and to help correct this, what he's heard maybe from people who were useful idiots of Vladimir Putin. I'm thinking of people like Tucker Carlson, but maybe also from Putin himself.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
who I'm sure is doing everything he can to try to manipulate Donald Trump and to offload responsibility for this war that he started. You could say back in 2003 when he poisoned a presidential candidate in Ukraine and certainly since 2014 after the first invasion, direct invasion of Ukraine.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Well, I think he's drawn to Putin for a number of reasons, one of which is he's reflexively contrarian. So if what he hears from the foreign policy, national security establishment in the United States is that Vladimir Putin is a threat. Vladimir Putin is engaged in a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States, Europe and the West overall. And he needs to be isolated.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
We need to impose costs on him. He has a tendency to do the opposite. Was mit Trump wirklich wichtig ist, ist, die Herausforderungen zu beurteilen. In diesem Fall die Weiterentwicklung von Putin in der Ukraine, aber auch die breite Reihe von de-stabilisierenden Aktivitäten und der Schattenkriege, die er gegen Europa durchführt.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Er brennt Lagerhäuser auf und schneidet Untersee-Kabeln und Schiffenbomben auf DHL-Fahrzeugen. Die Angelegenheit, die du erwähnt hast, ist, dass ich in der Oberbürgermeisterin am Abend auf eine andere Sache eingeladen bin. President Trump had seen in a U.S. newspaper laudatory comments about him by Vladimir Putin in an article where Putin also trashes the U.S. political system.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
And President Trump wanted me to mail this to Vladimir Putin. We had just received news about the Skripal poisoning. It was very clear that this had been orchestrated, directed from the Kremlin. And so I pocketed it.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Das Artikel mit der Note darauf, von Trump zu Putin, und ging zurück und sagte Präsident Trump später, hey, ich habe diesen Artikel nicht gesendet, den er mir gesendet haben wollte, weil ich sicher bin, Putin hätte es gegen dich benutzt. Und weißt du, was so traurig ist? Wenn Trump etwas sagt, wie er es in Helsinki erinnert hat, Das ist sympathisch mit Putin's warped worldview.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Putin benutzt das gegen Trump. Trump weichert seine eigene Position.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
I think they must be. Marco Rubio, Mike Walz, who's in my old position now, I think even Kellogg, I think are much more reliable on understanding the cause, the cause of not just the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Hunderts von Tausenden von Menschen sind dort getötet und verletzt. Das ist natürlich alles zu Wladimir Putin.
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
I do believe so. And I tell numerous stories in the book about how Trump learns conversationally. The more people he talks to, the better. This is why I think it's really important for European leaders to engage Donald Trump, to go see him, to talk to him. Von ihrer Erfahrung. Er erzählt ihm Geschichten. Ich meine, was will Donald Trump wissen? Hey, was ist in uns? Warum kümmern wir uns?
Global News Podcast
Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia
Und er will auch wissen, warum müssen wir es tun? Warum kann jemand anderes es tun? Und dann fragt er, wie viel es kostet? Wie können wir andere Menschen mehr bezahlen?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I mean, right in the book, Prime Minister Netanyahu called me up and said, what the hell's going on? That's ridiculous.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I don't think they're excited about giving aid to Israel. No, that's right, that's right. They're internally inconsistent, a lot of these views, by this kind of group of people. I don't know what to call them, the retrenchers, the neo-isolationists. I mean, none of these labels are particularly, are comprehensive, and there are a wide variety of views I mentioned are within this group.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Yeah, they're inconsistent in their views.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
OK, so I think it's really important to understand where Donald Trump came from, from coming of age. And I read about this in the book. 1970s, right? Lost war in Vietnam and the evacuation from Saigon. You had the first president in history resign during this period of time. A period of stagflation, multiple energy crises in this period of time, as we're eulogizing
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
President Carter, really the Carter presidency, right? And he ran hostage. And he came out of that with a real sense of aggrievement that America's been aggrieved, that America's been taken advantage of. And so he wants to, first of all, advance American interest. I mean, America first, it's really what he wants to do, not in the 1930s Lindbergh sense, but like in a Reagan act.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Reagan, make America great again. Make America great with Reagan. It's, I think, consciously borrowed from that period of time. And so he is well motivated in that connection. There's nothing nefarious about that. But he does, as a result, have this deep skepticism about sustained commitments abroad.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And he tends to see retrenchment or disengagement from those complex problem sets as an unmitigated good. But at the same time, he understands peace through strength. At the same time, he understands that it's a lot cheaper to prevent a war than to have to fight one. He wants others to share the burden, but he's deeply skeptical of the alliances that allow burden sharing.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So he has a great deal of consistency in a lot of areas, right? border security, deregulation, trade issues, encountering Chinese economic aggression, for example, invigorating our industrial base. He's dead consistent on that stuff. But there are these other issue areas where he carries these opposing views with him.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And it's going to be the people around him who help him reconcile that kind of dissonance that he carries.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
That was a fun game I used to play with my wife, Katie, in the morning. Guess what the president tweeted last night as I was on the way out the door?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I like it. I mean, I really do.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Not strong enough, I think. So he's unconventional. Trump is really unconventional, obviously. He'll say things that are arresting. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I was like, wow, dude. did he really say that? But oftentimes, I recount some of these discussions in the book, some of the world leaders, it's really effective with them. He's not insulting with them.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Actually, when he's one-on-one with a world leader, he's a really good host. He's kind of in the hospitality business. He's a very gracious host. He's not mean to anybody in person, right? He might tweet something mean about Justin Trudeau, you know what I mean? But he's not But he's going to be, you know, and he might say something like about the 51st state. I mean, gosh, oh, geez.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So, but I'm not saying everything he says is productive. But in a lot of cases, because there's like really no filter, like there's no artifice with Donald Trump, right? What you see is what you get. That's unusual for a politician. And I think at times it can be effective for him.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And then I think also in these sorts of tweets, I think that's what we should do is unleash hell on not only Hamas, but their Iranian sponsors. If there are hostages, The Israeli hostages and American hostages, damn it, aren't released. I, for one, and there hasn't been much discussion of this, really.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I am disappointed that we have our military has not been actively engaged in getting our hostages back alongside of the Israeli military. Now, there are practical difficulties associated with that. The Israelis are pretty competent on their own. You know, what really can we do? We could do more.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
With the Houthis, for example, you know, the Houthis who are an agent of the Iranians at this stage, disrupting, shipping the Bab al-Mandeb. I think you could make relatively short work of the Houthis. And so there are ways for him to make good on this, you know, to make good on this kind of rhetoric. He would also say other things. I tell a story in the book, too, about...
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
You know, Pakistan, right? I mean, we had serial gullibility with Pakistan, right? And we believe for so many time and time again, you know, if we just give them more aid, you know, they'll behave differently and stop support for terrorist organizations. And, you know, and then finally Trump just tweeted, hey, we're to stop, we're to cut everything off to the Pakistanis.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, he had told our government to do that, but they were, people were dragging their feet. So a lot of the tweets, you know, a lot of them were effective. Some were counterproductive.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
many of them were just amusing you know like like remember the one i would never call kim jong-un short and fat remember that one yeah yeah i mean i was i was i was in quality i was in hanoi at the time riding the back of the of uh one of the armored cars in the in the convoy with them with matt pottinger who's fantastic um and we were just crying laughing about it and so how did like how
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And then you have this- That was in the UN speech. I tried to get them to take that out of the speech. There's stories in there too. You asked them to take it out. It was pretty funny, yeah, pretty funny.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No, it was a cover story. It was a story, a big headline story. I don't know if it was on page one. It was not on page one. Yeah, he was signing it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He gave it to me to send to Vladimir Putin.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
It was late at night. I was in there on another matter. And he gave it to me. And I tell the story in the book. And it was at the same time as we were discovering really the cause of the Skripal poisoning. Remember the use of the nerve agent in Salisbury, England? in an attempt to murder Sergei Skripal and contaminate him and his daughter, it put tens of thousands of people at risk.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Killed a woman later who picked up a perfume bottle later, yeah. So I brought it down to the staff secretary who runs all the paperwork that would have sent this to the Russian embassy to go there. And I said, hey, don't send this until I tell you to send it. And just held it with them. And then as everything came to light, I came back to the president.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I just told him, I said, hey, you know, remember that article he told me to send? I didn't send it, you know. And he was angry with me. And I said, hey, listen.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, I mean, not yelling, but he was clearly angry. You know, you should do what I tell you to do, General. Damn it. You know, something like that. And I said, hey, you have to know I did this for you because, you know, Putin would have used this thing against you. or to kind of escape responsibility for the Skripal poisoning and muddy the waters associated with it, embarrass you, you know?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So, and then he moved on to something else, you know? And didn't get angry about it again. But I mean, these sorts of tensions, you know, kind of wear you down with them a little bit over time. And I think you had a choice.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Like what you could do is, you know, you could just try to take that kind of the ingratiate yourself path and, you know, the praise path and everything and keep your job, you know. But then that begs the question, what the hell good is it your job anyway, right? If you're not going to tell the president what you think, you know, he should hear from his national security advisor.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So I was at peace with being slowly ground down, which is part of the idea. Part of the story in the book. And I consider it a privilege to do it every day, really. I mean, I don't think I would have. I mentioned the book. I would do it again. If I could go back to walking down Walnut Street, which I opened the book with here, getting the phone call to come interview, I would do it again.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Although President Trump and I are used up with each other. I'm never going to serve him directly again. But I hope he succeeds, as I'm sure we all do, right? We need the President of the United States to succeed.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No, so there were four candidates for the job in Mar-a-Lago on President's Day weekend in 2017. John Bolton. was interviewing with the president in the second interview just before me. I didn't know that. There had been a down selection after our first interview on Sunday. I was held over for a second interview on Monday.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I didn't know who else was there until I run into John Bolton in the men's room on the way into that rather understated living room in Mar-a-Lago. You know, I was just an ambassador general, you know. And then when he was on his way out, I was on my way in.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
and President Trump will tell a story, but he walks across the living room and says, oh, no need for another interview, you're hired, and they start to talk about how to announce it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, it was kind of an extended audition. And people around Ambassador Bolton were some of the people kneecapping me from the various groups, a whole sort of ecosystem that I didn't really even know existed around Washington. He was very strong on Iran, which I think I was too.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But they would come after me when I was giving the president advice to not pull out of the Iran nuclear deal immediately. He could do it whenever the heck he wanted. But I said, you have a lot of leverage right now. Once you're out of the deal, you're going to lose that leverage.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So why not use staying in the deal temporarily to get the Europeans and others to impose more sanctions on the Iranians for their behavior outside of the Iran nuclear deal and choke them off? And then wouldn't it be great if Iran themselves get out of the nuclear deal because it's not doing what they want it to do? So we gave that a shot.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But of course, this led to a lot of criticism from Ambassador Bolton and mainly the people who were advocating for him to be the national security advisor. Because what happens, and I realize this kind of... later, is they're all really these informal lobbying groups that kind of form around this particular person to get a person in the job.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And what they try to do is activate anybody who has the president's ear to get in the president's ear. Oftentimes, these are the biggest donors. You know, for example, he'll have called the president, you really need to get rid of that guy, McMaster, and you need Bolton, damn it, you know. And so that's what was happening behind the scenes. And I described him in the, you know,
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
in the book is kind of like the dog that caught the car, man. Because the president kept saying, well, what do you think about John? Because the president and I had a lot of really sincere, good conversations about when I would leave. I said, if this isn't working out, I'm fine with leaving whenever you want me to leave. And he would say, well, who do you think would be a good successor?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And I would give him some names. And he'd always say, what do you think about John? What do you think about John? And I said, hey, if you trust him, If you think he's going to give you the best advice and advance your agenda, then he's the right person. He even said it to Katie the last day in the Oval Office. We're leaving in the White House on my last day.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And the president had my wife and I and my daughter and one of my daughters and sons-in-law and some nieces and nephews into the Oval Office. And he even asked Katie, he goes, hey, what do you think about John? She said, I don't know. who do you mean, like John Kelly? She's like, no, John Bolton. I said, okay. Katie said, well, yeah, you picked him. I hope you like him.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No, but I think that's what he did when he was building buildings in New York. He talks to the construction people. You see him at Mar-a-Lago, right? He talks to staff about the event that they're going to host at Mar-a-Lago or whatever. It's kind of his style. And John Bolton is an extremely competent person. He's extremely articulate. He's very knowledgeable about all the...
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
you know, the issues we were facing. So, I mean, the guy was not without merit, you know, to pick as my successor there.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Yeah. Well, in this case, no. And the reason is that I think what happens with President Trump and other presidents as well is they tend to mirror image whoever their interlocutor is, in this case an adversary of Putin, and think that he'll kind of have a conversation with them in which he prioritizes the same things that I would prioritize. But Putin is a man who's obsessed.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He's a man who's obsessed with restoring Russia to national greatness and to do so really by reestablishing the Russian empire. And so he has aspirations that go far beyond anything that's in reaction to what we could offer. And I think also he's operating against history.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I can't think of one example in history in which Assad was able to achieve a favorable outcome from a negotiated settlement that did not reflect the military realities on the ground. And so the idea that you can get a big deal with him without first convincing Putin that he's losing, I think President Trump will... belatedly come to that conclusion.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He'll recognize that there cannot be an end to the war until Putin is convinced that he's losing. Because Putin won't stop. Look at what he's doing right now. He's already annexed Belarus. He's continually the onslaught against Ukrainian people. He's taken about 30,000 casualties a month, which I think is unsustainable on the part of the Russians. But he's flipped an election in Romania.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He's meddling in other European elections. He's cutting undersea cables, burning warehouses in Lithuania, and putting incendiary bombs on DHL aircraft. I mean, Russia's waging a war against us right now. And so I think also, though, Russia's very weak. Putin is sitting on piles of cash that he can't convert. He has a severe labor shortage. They're on the verge of hyperinflation in the country.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And what if Donald Trump instead comes in, instead of saying, I'm going to solve it in a day, says, you know what? This kind of feckless approach to supporting Ukrainians, I think that was ridiculous. I'm going to issue a long-term, low-interest loan to the Ukrainians right now to buy as many US weapons and munitions as they want.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I don't know. I mean, I don't know.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I mean, the man has influence, and there's a lot of people that think that. But Donald Trump is. He's the deciding factor on that. Because you already have a lot of bipartisan support. And you just had, it was really that narrow, thin majority in the House that prevented it from happening. What I think is possible, And I actually don't even want to say this because I hope it happens.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And if I say it, it'll be less likely to happen. I'm not going to say it. All right, so, but I do think he will be able to, he will come to the conclusion that Putin is intractable on this. That reality is going to hit him. And then he's going to have a lot of options. I mean, what if he said to MBS, hey, what if we both produce some more oil?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
What if we drive the price of oil down to $45, $50, even $50 a barrel? Putin is screwed if that happens. Trump does think that way. He has a lot of levers to put on Putin. I think he should do it now. He should do it up front. And then if there is some sort of negotiation, enter into that negotiation alongside the Ukrainians from a position of strength.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, you know, it's really the strain is on both sides, the Russians and the Ukrainians now. The Ukrainians also have a significant manpower shortage, have a hard time generating the manpower to sustain their their defensive capabilities.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But Russia's ambitions are much larger than their military capabilities, even as they're employing North Korean troops, 12,000 North Korean troops, not a sign of strength that they're doing that. That force is already decimated, by the way, that North Korean force. So what has to change? The dynamic has to change somehow.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
There's no such thing as a permanent stalemate in war, not one that I can think of. Remember, the Western Front, World War I was stalemated. It was stalemated until it wasn't anymore by the Ludendorff offensives, which actually the Russians were employing. The German World War I infiltration tactics is what they're using right now to make some of these gains on the Western Front in Ukraine.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And then the war ultimately ends as a war of maneuver with the entry of the United States. But there are a series of swings back and forth. In 1917, General Nivelle leads an offensive. He says, I have the solution. Whenever a general says that, look for the exits. You know what I mean? A general has the solution. So he impales the French army on German defenses, breaks the French army.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The French army mutinies. It looks like it's going to collapse. Then you have the Ludendorff offenses, which follow, which gain a lot of ground, but then peter out. And then you get the allies gaining strength with US entry, and the war ends as a war maneuver. So right now, there's not a lot of movement on the front, but that could change. And every military has a breaking point, right?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Every person has a breaking point. Battles, combat, is aimed at the disintegration of human groups. And when I look at the losses that the Russians are taking, I don't think it's sustainable.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
You know, there are a lot of talented people coming to this administration. I mean, there are some people I wouldn't pick, and you mentioned a couple of them. But the Secretary of State is fantastic. I worked with Senator Rubio on a big shift in the Cuba policy. He's extremely professional, collaborative.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He worked extremely well across the aisle in Congress to help get through elements of the president's foreign policy agenda. He was one of the first people to really raise the alarm bells on China and China's weaponization of its mercantilist economic model against us. I think he's a fantastic pick. Mike Walz, the Congressman, is a true professional. He's an empathetic person. He's a team builder.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He's a military veteran who's led with distinction in special forces. And he understands defense and national security issues extremely well. One of the subcommittees that he led also in the House was a subcommittee on China's influence on the Western Hemisphere. So he's gone deep into a lot of these critical issues He's going to be a fantastic pick. He is a fantastic pick.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
His deputy, Alex Wong, is extremely effective as well. I mean, it's hard to take exception with the Secretary of Commerce or Treasury or the Interior, Doug Burgum. So this is, I mean, this is really kind of an A team in a lot of ways. But what does concern me, to get to your question, is will it be harmonious? Probably not harmonious, right, in the Trump administration. But who concerns you, too?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, what concerns me are people who kind of- No, what concerns you, but who concerns you?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
There are people who are coming into the administration who are in that kind of retrenchment. All of the ills of the world were due to neoconservatives, right? Who got us involved in all these endless wars. And that's really what's put our constraint on our country. And
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
You know, and we have to, you know, so a lot of people who got labeled as kind of the neoconservatives, they got, they're already kneecapped and out of the picture, right?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I think so, yeah, I think so. It's hard to say like where they're more powerful, but I think some of the appointments reflect it. But I think overall, if you have the senior people in the cabinet and national security advisor, the head of the NEC, National Economic Council, who are determined to bring the president options, to give him best analysis, you can work this out.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Differences of view are okay. I think that's good. You want to have a debate in front of the president. I think what really is a disservice to a president is when you have a group of people who form kind of a cabal to end run things. Like the Neoconservatives. And to manipulate.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I'm really optimistic, by the way, because I do think that Trump, for all his faults and everything, he has a very positive agenda that I think could unleash the potential of our economy. So even if you don't like a lot of what Trump does, deregulation, you've got to be for that. You've got to be for streamlining government. I think he's going to try to invigorate our industrial base.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And what I've been trying to say to our friends abroad is, hey, don't try to Trump-proof the world, man. Right? Because a lot of what you care about, energy security, Chinese economic aggression, supply chain resilience, your own industrial basis, that's what Trump cares about. Partner with him on it. Let's work together on it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So I think you're starting to see a little bit of that attitude with the visits to the Royal Court in Mar-a-Lago. And so I'm hoping that that does, that generates a sense of optimism in the free world, which is what we need these days, right? And when I look at us, When you look at us from the outside, we're ugly, right? Everything's in the open, right? We're divided and everything.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
It's vitriolic at times. But those dictatorships, they're actually very brittle. They look strong from the outside, but they're very brittle. Look at how weak Russia is. Look at China's economy right now and the difficulties that they have. Iran. I mean, North Korea, really?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I mean, so I would say we should be much more confident in who we are as Americans and in our future and in future generations.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Hey, Michael, what a blast to be here with you and to be in my hometown of Philadelphia and everything. I just want to say at the outset, go Eagles, go Eagles. And I love the free press. I mean, I think all of you are fans here too, right? I mean, it's just so fantastic. And what a privilege. So thanks to everybody. And thanks to everybody who came out tonight in the cold.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So it was at war with ourselves. I mean, that's why that's the title of the book. But that's not unprecedented. I took the title from my conversation with Admiral Poindexter, who had been a national security advisor in the Reagan administration. He was talking about not his time as national security advisor, although he did have a bumpy road there with the rank contra and everything else.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But he was talking about the first year of the Reagan administration. He said, yeah, we were at war with ourselves. And what I came to understand across that year is I think a lot of that at war with yourselves and that difficult environment you described has to do with the way people define their roles, right? How they see their roles as they come into an administration.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And I think that there are people in any administration who want to help the elected president make the best decisions for the American people, right? I mean, that's what you would hope everybody wants to do. And in my role, that had to do with making sure the president gets best advice and gets multiple options to determine his own agenda and make those decisions.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Absolutely. And I think that's kind of the second group of people. They don't want to give the president options. They want to manipulate decisions based on their own agenda, not the president's agenda.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And then in Donald Trump's administration, a group that was probably overrepresented are people who define the president as an emergency who has to be contained or as a danger to the country or the world. And so the problem with that second and third group of people, hey, it's like nobody elected you. So not only are you not serving the president well. But these are people he's chosen.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
They're people he's chosen.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Right. Yeah, absolutely. And the tactics they employed to do that, it was all kind of, it just made everything harder. And really, the story of the book is, at least for the 13 months I was there, we transcended it. We got things done anyway. But every element of that friction just kind of wore you down, ground you down a little bit. And the tactics they employed undercut you and so forth.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But the first Trump administration, I think you're alluding to this, what's going to be different in the second one, nobody was as surprised as Donald Trump when he won the election in 2016, right? And so there wasn't a whole lot of preparation in terms of who's going to come into a lot of these positions. And he didn't have any kind of trust build up with a lot of the people.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
He didn't know the people. Now it's going to be I think, somewhat different in that he's had a lot more time to prepare deliberately for this. And he's selected his people. It was easy to kneecap me, the people down the hall, because I didn't have a history with him. Now it's going to be harder to do that with Michael Waltz, who's really his clear pick.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And he's known as a congressman, for example, or Marco Rubio. Although they will come under attack, though, because there are still going to be these different camps in the administration based on those different motivations. but also based on, I think, some of the worldviews within the administration that will not be compatible with one another.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Well, you know, President Trump obviously values loyalty like any president would. But also, you know, with President Trump, like any other president, right? He's the most powerful person in the world, you could argue, right? So people are going to try to ingratiate themselves to him and try to use him to advance their agenda. So, you know, people, they know how to push his buttons.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
You know, I mentioned in the You know, the first meeting I went into the Oval Office, I describe it as an environment of competitive sycophancy. I mean, it was unbelievable. I mean, your instincts are always so good, Mr. President. You're so wise. I was like, oh my gosh, are these people serious? So I think- Does he fall for that? Yeah. Yeah, he does.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
It's absolutely stunning.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No, but I think a lot of people do. And really, part of my motivation in writing this, not that the president's going to necessarily read it or anything, and there's a lot of positive about what he accomplished in here and so forth. But I want it to be a bit of a warning to him. The guy was in the real estate business. Of course, you've always had people try to manipulate him or so forth.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But he's particularly vulnerable to that kind of tactic. And the other tactic I mentioned is that the president really enjoys positive attention and praise and so forth, also from his loyal political base generally. So oftentimes, he would make, I think, a really tough, great decision, best decision he could make for the American people. And then people get in his ear about it. What do they say?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Hey, that's going to make you look weak to your base. That's going to alienate your base.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And so it's that kind of effort to influence him, which precludes Donald Trump, I think, from getting to the politics of addition, to bring more people into his movement, his tent, and results in some of the, maybe a couple of the nominations and things that he does, really to just double down on the affirmation from his base.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Absolutely. Used it all the time, you know. And, you know, there are anecdotes about it. I mean, what I'd said to the president is, hey, you know, the terrorists, they want to define this as a war of religion. But these are irreligious criminals who use a perverted interpretation of Islam to advance their criminal and political agendas. And he's like, I like that general. I like that general.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And I said, all you have to do is call it Islamist. And then, of course, that elicited the counterattack that really played out in Breitbart and all these pseudo media platforms that Bannon and others could influence. Another example was what he was going to pull out of the Paris Accord, which, you know, I mean, it was fine with me because the Paris Accord doesn't
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
accomplish anything anyway, right? If you really care about global warming, I mean, what the hell good is the Paris Accord going to really do? But he had a line in the speech, you know, I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. And it was like just a gratuitous kick in the ass to Macron, you know? It's called the Paris Accord, you know? And he was trying to get Trump to stand.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I said, hey, you know, we could probably do without that line. And then, of course, you know, that the response is, oh, no, the base will love it, for example. Or if he was concerned about transgender people coming into the military, for example, and the degree to which that's a pre-existing condition, maybe, and so forth.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And I said, well, you should do a study of it and do it properly and make the decision. And then the others who said, no, your base wants you to just tweet something. Just tweet something right now. So President Trump is very disruptive. And there's a lot in Washington that needs to be disrupted. But part of the story is that he's so disruptive, he often disrupts his own agenda as a result.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And so I think what helps him, what can help him, are people around him who understand his agenda, who want to help him pursue his agenda, but who help him be a lot more effective. And again, kind of get to the politics of addition, right? One of the big themes in the book is at war with ourselves, like within the administration.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But hey, we're at war with ourselves across America, like in our polity, right? And everybody's at each other's throats. And the vitriolic nature of our discourse is not good for our psyche. And it's also not good for the strength of our nation, because I think it portrays weakness to our adversaries and enemies abroad.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
So I guess the message would be, hey, let's get over it, work together, have meaningful, respectful discussions about what we want to achieve to build a better future.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Yeah, worked his way back into the president's good graces in time to get a presidential pardon before the end of Trump's first term.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
After he was profoundly disloyal to him and disparaged Trump to anybody who would listen. Yeah.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I don't know. It's a national security picture. I think he's like an outside attack dog.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
No, it really came from us being successful as part of the national security team on the National Security Council staff in presenting the president with best analysis and with multiple options. Because Bannon didn't want multiple options. He wanted his option. He wanted his foreign policy. And so he saw me as a danger to his agenda, right?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
And so what they did is they came up with a number of narratives that then they advanced in social media and one of the biggest social media attacks against any individual in history up to that time in the summer of August 2017. And- Was Breitbart against you, basically? Yeah, well, they spark it, right? But a company that didn't want to be named in the book did a digital forensics audit.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Laboratory did it at the time. But since then, another company that does AI-related analysis showed exactly how these messages spread. It's really fascinating. And they went to real people, like real influencers and real kind of pseudo media platforms like Breitbart and so forth. Some cable news personalities, for example, some bloggers in the blogosphere.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
But then the message was spread. And the heat, it's like a heat sensor they show in this briefing, spread wildly because of Russian trolls and bots. Because the Russians kind of allied themselves with, I don't know what to call this group. I don't know what you call them, Michael. It's the alt-right. None of it's useful terms, right?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
People have a broad range of views, and they're entitled to their views. I'm not disparaging them anyway. But this group of people essentially were allied with the Russians, at least tacitly. And that's how the whole thing spread, around three narratives. One was I was a globalist general. If it wouldn't put America first. The second was that I was anti-Israel, which was kind of ludicrous.