Donald Trump was an easy mark for Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Trump’s former national security adviser.
H.R. McMaster writes in his upcoming book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, that Putin used Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to influence Trump as president. The Guardian obtained an advance copy of the book, due to be released on August 27.
Trump infamously praised Putin throughout his presidential term, dismissed criticism from his staff of the Russian autocrat, and would fire McMaster as a result in 2018. The now-retired general spoke about Trump’s incomprehensible defenses of Putin in the book.
“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” McMaster recalls telling his wife Katie in 2018 after the news that Putin’s agents had poisoned a Russian dissident in the United Kingdom, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter.
After the assassination attempt, as other world leaders sought to make a strong response to Putin, Trump was especially happy with a New York Post article headlined “Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics,” writing a friendly note to the Russian president with a black Sharpie and asking McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin.”
“I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack,” McMaster wrote in the book, adding that he handed the note over to a White House office that handles communications from the president.
“Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin, and very likely Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it,” McMaster wrote.
McMaster wrote that “Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his staffers seeking a tougher stance against Russia.
“Putin had described Trump as ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt’, and Trump had revealed his vulnerability to this approach, his affinity for strongmen, and his belief that he alone could forge a good relationship with Putin,” wrote McMaster. “The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated for a tough approach to the Kremlin seemed only to drive the president to the opposite approach.”
Many of the generals and national security officials who served under Trump have had a falling out with the Republican presidential nominee. His former chief of staff, General John Kelly, said that Trump praised Adolf Hitler and made disparaging comments about veterans, calling them suckers and losers. Another former national security adviser, John Bolton, has said that Trump “can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false.” If Trump is elected again, it’s all but guaranteed that he’ll put America’s safety and security at risk.
