Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster suggested that former President Trump needed to surround himself with skilled national security experts to ensure he wasn’t manipulated.
McMaster appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday to talk about his upcoming memoir. Release date: August 27He said the memoir described his efforts to protect Trump’s “independence of judgment,” because “in every administration there are people who try to manipulate the president into making decisions.”
“Well, I write in the book about the dissonance that Donald Trump has, the conflicting ideas that he finds difficult to reconcile at times. That’s why I think it’s important that he has a competent team around him to help him articulate his own policies,” he said.
He said Trump is capable of making “sound decisions” after being given options, but sometimes finds it difficult to stick to them.
“My experience in the first year of implementing a lot of big policy shifts is that if you give him the best analysis, give him multiple options, he can weigh those options, consider the long-term costs and consequences, and make a sound decision,” he said.
“And in the book, I write that at times he finds it difficult to follow through on those decisions because he knows how people are going to push his buttons, especially those related to maintaining the full support of his political base.”
The Wall Street Journal In an excerpt from his upcoming book, “At War with Ourselves,” released on Friday, McMaster told host Margaret Brennan that he wasn’t sure whether he should write about how Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to “manipulate” him.
“And of course, Putin is the world’s biggest liar. So Margaret, I struggled with whether or not I should write about how Putin tried to manipulate President Trump. And I thought, Putin knows how he’s doing it,” he said.
“So writing about Putin’s attempts to push Donald Trump’s buttons may make a future Trump less susceptible to those tactics if elected president,” he added.
In the excerpt, McMaster wrote that Trump asked him to send a newspaper clipping with a note to Putin following the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018. Trump spokesman Steven Chang suggested the incident did not happen in response to The Hill’s request for comment.
“This is nothing more than fake news designed to use a salacious, fabricated story to sell what should be a bargain in the fiction section,” he said.
