Donald Trump was easily taken advantage of by foreign leaders, according to a new book by one of the former president’s ex–national security advisers.
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 administration between February 2017 to April 2018. McMaster has given new insight into just how easy it was for foreign leaders to outwit Trump, who has been desperate to paint himself as a strongman on the international stage.
According to The New York Times, McMaster wrote that he once tried to prepare Trump for a trip to China in November 2017, the “most consequential” stop on the former president’s tour through Asia. McMaster recalled attempting to explain to Trump that Chinese President Xi Jinping would attempt to get Trump to say things that were good for China, but not in the best interest of the U.S. and its allies. McMaster warned Trump to steel himself, and the former president seemed to understand.
When it came time to meet with Xi, however, everything came apart. Trump ended up mindlessly agreeing with Xi that South Korea’s military exercises were “provocative” and a “waste of time.” Trump also suggested that China might have a legitimate claim to the Senkaku Islands, which have been controlled by Japan since 1895.
Dismayed, McMaster wrote a note to Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly, bluntly stating that Xi “ate our lunch.”
McMaster also wrote that he’d once been asked by Trump to deliver a fawning message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, scrawled across a New York Post article that reported Putin had slammed the U.S. political system but found Trump notably compliant. “I have no disappointment at all,” Putin reportedly said about Trump.
McMaster refused to pass on the note, later telling a furious Trump that it would “reinforce the narrative that you are somehow in the Kremlin’s pocket.”
McMaster wrote that 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.
And in an interview on CNN earlier this week, McMaster said that Trump forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 members of the Taliban, as part of his negotiations for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
