H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Honestly with Bari Weiss

Very few people have worked closely with President-elect Donald Trump, gotten fired, and walked away with a pretty balanced view of him.

But former national security adviser to Trump, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster is an exception.

In his book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, he gives an honest account of working in Trump’s first administration: the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Last week, McMaster sat down with Michael Moynihan at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for an in-person Free Press Book Club event to discuss it all. They talk about his moments of tension with Trump, his understanding of Trump’s foreign policy, and how Trump’s rhetoric toward adversaries was actually good, despite being villainized by the press. And also, as McMaster puts it, Trump can be “so disruptive, he often interrupts his own agenda.”

They also get into the president-elect’s current cabinet picks—ones who McMaster sees as good, like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, but how good picks do not ensure a harmonious administration. They discuss Trump’s options for handling Russia, Iran, and Hamas in his second term, and why McMaster is surprisingly and cautiously optimistic about Trump 2.0.

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The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Washington, D.C. FDD’s experts conduct in-depth research, produce accurate and timely analyses, identify illicit activities, and provide policy options—all with the aim of strengthening U.S. national security and reducing or eliminating threats posed by enemies of the United States and other free nations. Learn more at FDD.org.

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