Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster released a book detailing his time working with then-President Donald Trump, painting him as a difficult boss vulnerable to the whims of perceived adversaries of the United States.
McMaster, who was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Roxborough, wrote the book "At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House," candidly retelling several anecdotes about Trump and other Cabinet officials. McMaster served under Trump from February 2017 to April 2018.
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One section of the book has McMaster claim that Trump was susceptible to manipulation, with Russian President Vladimir Putin playing to "Trump's ego and insecurities with flattery."
McMaster described a scene in which Trump asked him to deliver an appreciative note to Putin after the Russian president condemned the American political system but praised Trump. The request came not long after Putin was accused of directing an attack on a former Russian military operative with a nerve agent.
"After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump," McMaster wrote in the book.
Another leader that McMaster believed had appealed to Trump was Chinese President Xi Jinping. McMaster recalled a November 2017 trip to Beijing in which he warned Trump that Xi would want him to say things that benefited China at the expense of the United States.
McMaster wrote that Trump expressed agreement with Xi on key issues such as South Korean military exercises and China's claim on the Senkaku Islands. A deflated McMaster wrote a note to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly saying that Xi "ate our lunch."
According to McMaster, Trump was "impatient" with McMaster's "negative vibe when warning him of manipulation from Putin.
"If (Trump) was going to be contrary, I hoped he would be contrary to the Russian dictator, not to me."
Writing about other Trump Cabinet officials, McMaster said that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis "lacked confidence in a president they regarded as impulsive, erratic, and dangerous to the republic."
He wrote that Tillerson and Mattis "prioritized their control of policy over collaboration" but admitted that "we all diminished one another’s efforts and our ability to make the most of our opportunity to help Trump make decisions, stick with those decisions, and act in the interest of the American people."
Ultimately, McMaster characterizes Trump's administration as a "vortex of vitriol" and calls Trump the "antagonist in his own story."
Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesperson for Trump's 2024 election campaign, said in a statement that McMaster's book "is riddled with untrue stories intended to use made-up, salacious fabrications in order to sell copies of a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section."