Donald Trump's former national security adviser H.R. McMaster shared new details about the chaos and dysfunction that he said marked the ex-president's first term in office.
The retired U.S. Army lieutenant general is publishing a new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” focusing on the former president's service as commander in chief and his own tenure as national security adviser, reported CNN.
"In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as 'exercises in competitive sycophancy' during which Trump’s advisers would flatter the president by saying stuff like, 'Your instincts are always right' or, 'No one has ever been treated so badly by the press,'" the network reported.
"Meanwhile, Trump would say 'outlandish' things like, 'Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?' in Mexico or, 'Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?'"
McMaster dismissed former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as a “fawning court jester” who played “on Trump’s anxiety and sense of beleaguerment" by claiming various individuals were "out to get him" and suggesting ways to "counterpunch." And he said former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Defense Secretary James Mattis often disagreed with the ex-president.
"Tillerson, who had previously run Exxon, is portrayed as inaccessible to top officials in Trump’s administration, while Mattis is described as an obstructionist," CNN reported. "McMaster writes that Tillerson and Mattis viewed Trump as 'dangerous' and seemed to construe their roles as if 'Trump was an emergency and that anyone abetting him was an adversary.' Trump himself also contributed to the dysfunction: 'He enjoyed and contributed to interpersonal drama in the White House and across the administration.'"
McMaster also details his efforts to convince Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin “was not and would never be Trump’s friend," and he warned that he would try to manipulate him with “ambiguous promises of a ‘better relationship.’”
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“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's time in the White House ended when he publicly stated in February 2018 that the indictment of Russian intelligence officers for their interference in the 2016 presidential election was "inconvertible" evidence that Russia had meddled in that election, and Trump quickly responded on Twitter.
"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. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!" the former president said.