Donald Trump once pitched blowing up drugs in Mexico, according to his ex–national security adviser, who detailed the former president’s “outlandish” ideas for defense in a forthcoming book.
In At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster detailed the inner workings of the Trump White House, slamming meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” where Trump made particularly “outlandish” suggestions, according to CNN, which obtained a copy of the book before its release Wednesday. McMaster served in Trump’s White House from February 2017 to April 2018.
When speaking about narcotics in Mexico, Trump once asked, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” according to McMaster. Another time, the former president wondered, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?”
This isn’t the first time Trump has decided bombs could solve all problems. In 2019, Axios reported that Trump had suggested multiple times that security officials use nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the U.S.
McMaster wrote that Trump’s advisers would continue to praise him no matter how bad his ideas were, saying things like, “Your instincts are always right,” and, “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.”
McMaster also described Steve Bannon as Trump’s “fawning court jester,” who was able to take advantage of “Trump’s anxiety and sense of beleaguerment … with stories, mainly about who was out to get him and what he could do to ‘counterpunch.’”
“I knew that to fulfill my duty, I would have to tell Trump what he didn’t want to hear,” McMaster wrote. He said that one of the issues on which he most regularly disagreed with Trump was Russia, specifically Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Trump vehemently denied.
“I wished that Trump could separate the issue of Russian election meddling from the legitimacy of his presidency,” McMaster wrote. “He could have said, ‘Yes, they attacked the election. But Russia doesn’t care who wins our elections. What they want to do is pit Americans against one another.’”
McMaster explained that Trump’s “deep sense of aggrievement” prevented him from making this kind of distinction.
McMaster wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin, “a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” attempting to create a rift between Trump and those on his staff who sought a tougher stance against Russia. McMaster warned the former president that Putin “was not and would never be Trump’s friend,” but Trump didn’t take the straight talk very well.
A source told CNN that Trump had referred to McMaster’s briefings as gruff and condescending. Politico reported that Trump once interrupted McMaster during a briefing, crying, “Look at this guy, he’s so serious!”
In February 2018, McMaster’s determination to hold Russia to account went too far, and he found himself in hot water with his boss.
McMaster publicly stated that the FBI’s indictment of several Russian intelligence officers for interfering with the 2016 presidential election was “incontrovertible” evidence of Russian tampering—but Trump couldn’t handle anyone questioning the results of the election that had placed him in the White House.
“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 at the time. “Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”
McMaster resigned a few months later and was replaced by John Bolton, who wrote his own scathing rebuke of his former boss. Bolton recently said that Trump “can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false.”
While McMaster had skirted away from outright criticisms of his former boss in his previous published works, his post–January 6 account is blistering by comparison.
On January 6, 2021, Trump’s “ego and love of self … drove him to abandon his oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution,’ a president’s highest obligation,” McMaster wrote.
