H.R. McMaster

- With election Day around the corner, Trump's former national security advisor speaks out this week on "Firing Lines".

- There's not like a big filter there, you know, between candidate Trump and the real Trump.

What you see is what you get with that guy.

- He spent nearly 14 months as Trump's National Security Advisor.

- You doing a good, great job.

- [Margaret] HR McMaster played a leading role in crafting a new and assertive national security strategy.

- We face a challenge from road regimes that flout international norms, pursue weapons of mass destruction, and export terror.

- [Margaret] McMaster spent over 30 years in the US Army where he served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

His latest book "At War with Ourselves" examines how trump's disruptive behavior affected American interests at home and abroad.

- I describe the fragility of his ego, and the need for affirmation.

This is not a news flash to anybody.

But one of the ways that people would try to manipulate Donald Trump is to say, you know, this will make you look weak.

- [Margaret] Three other generals from the Trump administration have said the former president is a danger to American democracy.

What does general HR McMaster say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - General HR McMaster, welcome back to "Firing Line".

- Hey Morgan, it's great to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

- You're a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution where I serve on the Board of Overseers, and I'm delighted to welcome you back for a conversation about recent developments in foreign policy.

Israel and Iran have entered into a new era of direct confrontation.

China has just held maritime drills around Taiwan.

North Korean troops have reportedly arrived at the front lines in Ukraine, a development that President Zelenskyy has called the First Step to a World War.

Will the United States be electing a wartime president next week?

- Yes, Margaret, I think we already really are at war because others are at war with us.

And you mentioned a lot of these actions against Taiwan with kind of a rehearsal it seems, of a blockade for a blockade.

But also Russia is waging, I think, a shadow war against against the United States, and Europe already through political subversion.

So it is a very dangerous period.

I think the New American president is going to face, I think, challenges to our security that we haven't experienced since at least the Cold War.

- Your book "At War with Ourselves", you write about quote, helping Trump direct his disruptive nature toward what needs to be disrupted.

- [HR] Right.

- What needs to be disrupted in the world right now?

- Well, a lot of our policies have been, I think, self-defeating.

In particular, I think the policies toward the Middle East broadly and Iran in particular.

- Would you say Iran is the next president's most urgent and acute threat?

- Yeah, I would say it's Iran certainly.

Because Iran has been waging this proxy war, I think against us, you know, the great Satan.

But once it knew about it, are the direct attacks between Iran and Israel.

- And Israel.

- And then also the degree to which they are attacking international shipping, for example, in the Red Sea, by the Houthis, which were a proxy of the Iranians.

But also, we've learned just recently that Russia is providing a lot of the intelligence used to attack international shipping.

So yes, Iran is a big part of the problem that a new president will face, but it's really the connection between Iran and this greater axis of aggressors.

- Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was on this program a few weeks ago and said the US has every right to go ahead and lead offensive measures against the Houthis directly.

- Yes, I completely agree with that.

And you know, there's a reason for that, that's economic in terms of the disruption of shipping, but also, it's a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

- In your book "At War with Ourselves", you detail how Trump's disruptive nature often benefited US priorities.

I mean, one example I think you give is his insistence that our NATO partners pay their fair share.

- Right.

- You also write about how Trump often disrupted his own agenda.

In other words, his superpower was also his Achilles heel.

- Absolutely.

- [Margaret] You say quote, Trump's disruptive nature created opportunities while his character and prejudices rendered him unable to take advantage of it.

- Yes, that's right.

And so it, when I talk about his character in the book I describe, you know, sort of the kind of the fragility of his ego, and the need for affirmation.

This is not a news flash to anybody.

But one of the ways that people would try to manipulate Donald Trump is they would say, this will make you look weak, or this will alienate your base.

And what he really wants is that affirmation.

And if there's a threat that that could be taken away from him, he had a tendency to kind of disrupt himself.

You know, he would oftentimes make really solid decisions that others maybe wouldn't make.

I mean, I think for example, the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, right.

That many presidents have said they were gonna do that.

- But nobody ever had.

- Nobody ever had.

- And you think he did that out of reasons for ego?

- No, no, I think he did that because of his disruptive nature.

- Yeah.

- And his tendency to question conventional wisdom, which is positive.

But oftentimes he would be so disruptive he would disrupt his own agenda, for example, as you mentioned, burden sharing.

Right?

- Right.

- Everybody can sign up for that.

Of course, our allies should shoulder their fair share of the burden on defense.

But then to go further and say, well, if you don't pay up, we might not defend you.

That delivers kind of a psychological blow to the alliance and emboldens somebody like Vladimir Putin who would like nothing more than to divide the NATO Alliance.

So again, kind of a story of him, his disruptive nature, and I think all of us would agree, right?

Everybody would agree.

There's a lot in Washington that needs to be disruptive.

But of course the sad part of the story is that he tends to become the antagonist in his own story.

- You say that the book, the title "At War With Ourselves" almost represented what was happening in the White House.

You know, you had people from blatantly different points of view about what should be happening internationally, just down the hall from you.

How do you see us now eight years later?

- Yeah, well, I think we're in a much worse situation these days because of the dangers internationally.

And what you need, I think is, you know, you're gonna need a team around a president who provides that president with a broad range of views.

Right, I mean, if somebody disagreed with maybe what I was predisposed toward or thought was the best decision for the president, I didn't try to exclude that.

I wanted to bring it in, bring in that perspective.

- In fact, as a historian of the National Security Council, of course, your first book that was referenced on this program when you were originally on with Buckley, which we'll show a clip of, studied the National Security Council.

And one of the major lessons you say you took away with that is that providing multiple options to the president is the key lesson from the Vietnam era.

- Absolutely.

- So this is what you always tried to accomplish.

- Exactly.

What I learned about, you know, when I was writing about how and why Vietnam became an American war is that many of Lyndon Johnson's advisors decided, hey, to keep my influence with the President, I'm gonna tell the president what the president wants to hear.

And of course, you know, I was resolved to not do that, to always tell Donald Trump what he didn't want to hear.

Now.

- How did that go?

- It probably limited my shelf life.

You know, I mean, there's a reason why I was there for 13 months.

- I thought is was important for you to tell him what the truth was or the hard fact.

- Both, both.

And of course, you know, every president is going to be the object of manipulation and influence.

Right.

It's the most powerful person on earth.

And so what I saw as my job is to help protect the president from those who were trying to manipulate him into particular decisions, right.

To get the outcome they wanted.

I wanted Donald Trump to get the outcome he wanted because he was the person who was elected.

- Yeah, you talk about some of your colleagues down the hall.

You mentioned Steve Bannon, who would go out to Alt-Right Media and call you the globalist general.

And so.

- Among other things.

- Among, I mean that that's probably one of the most polite terms he used for you or Alt-Right Media used for you.

Steve Bannon was released from jail this week.

You know, there are reports that are credible reports that he will be back into the circle of influence of Donald Trump and his advisors.

Americans ought to think about, it seems to me, who will be in your position, the HR McMaster position and the other sort of positions around President Trump in a second Trump administration as we go into this election?

It seems to me, who will be the HR McMaster of the next administration?

Or will they all be from the same point of view, which is more of a revanchist, isolationist, JD Vance sort of worldview?

- Well, in the confirmed positions, which the National Security Advisor is not, right.

That doesn't require Senate confirmation.

But I think there are a lot of really good people waiting to serve any president.

And I would say if there's a Senator Haggerty or Cotton or somebody like that in the State Department, I feel pretty good about that, you know.

And so I think that it's really important.

- That's of course, a confirmed position.

- A confirmed position, the National Security Advisor is interesting because it doesn't require confirmation.

And what's unique about that job is that the National Security Advisor is the only person in the national security and foreign policy establishment, who has the president as his or her only client.

- Yeah.

- And so that job is really critical, because to serve the president well, you want someone who understands his or her role.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus has said, you know, this is what is most important to understand well the role assigned you.

And I think when people get in trouble in Washington or people who don't do the job as well as they should, they don't really think about what their role is or they misunderstand it.

They think, hey, my role is, as I mentioned, you know, to manipulate the president into the decision I want.

Or in the case of, you know, the first Trump administration, this was the case for a number of people.

They saw the president as an emergency that had to be contained.

And so they thought it was their job to protect the country and maybe the world from the president.

- I'm still wondering who the likely national security staff will be in a second Trump administration.

And at least in the policy realm, we see figures that are much more aligned with JD Vance and his revanchism, his neo isolationist posture.

Rick Grenell, for example, Tulsi Gabbard perhaps, Tucker Carlson, heaven forbid.

That's my editorialization.

I mean, is there anyone that gives you confidence that you see on the inner circle advising him that gives you a degree of comfort?

- Yeah, I just don't know, Margaret.

I mean, part of the.

- That's concerning if you don't know.

- Part of the story "War With "Ourselves", part of the Trump administration is like, who wants to sign up for that program?

You know what I mean?

If it's going to be, again, you know, this sort of internal conflict and friction.

And we did have, we had the friction with some of the people you mentioned, but we had the a-team on that National Security Council staff, I mean.

- That's another concern.

We're really gonna have the a-team second time around.

- Yeah, I mean, that's a concern.

But I would say if anybody's listening who might wanna serve in a second Trump Administration, do it.

- Honestly, HR.

- 'Cause we want, we need you.

- General.

- Or the Harris administration, we need the best Americans to serve the president no matter who that president is.

- Okay, if people read your book closely.

- Right.

- They will read what I will just say it is not a strong affirmation for the productivity of the Trump White House.

So Trump's leadership's style, I will say from my reading of it.

- No, and it's very critical of President Trump.

Right, I mean, I think this is one of the things that kind of confounds some people about the book.

I do, I give him credit for what he deserves credit for, but then I'm just honest about like the bad, the good, the bad and the ugly - Yeah.

- Of the Trump administration.

And I hope that readers will, you know, make their own judgment really based on the story as I tell it, right?

- Yeah.

- I'm sure an imperfect version of it.

But I tried to do my best at describing what I observed and experienced in that job.

- Do leaders like Xi and Putin actually respect Donald Trump?

'Cause you write about how they're constantly flattering him and he loves flattery.

And I've heard you say at one point you told me they're always running an operation on him.

- Oh, yeah, right.

- Do they respect Donald Trump?

Or are they trying to flatter him?

- I think they respect him.

I mean, certainly they respect the office and the power of the president, but what they wanna do with any president is bend US policies toward their interests.

And Putin's the master at it, right?

I mean, he's a KGB officer.

- [Margaret] Right?

- And, you know, remember what he did with President George W. Bush and let his crucifix dangle out of his shirt.

And he has a long history of studying and then trying to manipulate American presidents.

And every previous president right from George W. Bush to President Obama, and I would say even President Biden went through this arc of thinking, oh, they can come to some kind of an taunt with Putin.

So I think every president has suffered under that delusion.

The question is, you know, if there's a second Trump presidency, will he learn from that?

I mean, I would hope so.

- Yeah, well, hope springs eternal.

There's not a lot of substantive evidence that Donald Trump has learned from anything.

- Right, or what President Harris learned from those previous experiences.

- Well.

- I think, I mean, I think it's really important to know.

Vladimir Putin will never be our friend.

Vladimir Putin will never stop or even moderate, I think his effort, to tear down the existing order, especially in Europe, and the transatlantic relationship under the theory that he can be the last man standing.

Right, he knows he doesn't have the power to compete head on the economic power, the military power.

But what he can do is help tear everybody else down.

- Trump refuses to say anything negative about Putin.

You write in the book that you never understood, quote, after over a year in the job, I cannot understand Putin's, hold on Trump.

Earlier this week, JD Vance refused to characterize Putin as an enemy of the United States.

Quite in contrast with characterization you just articulated.

Dan Coats, who was in charge of intelligence in the Trump Administration, was quoted in Bob Woodward's book to say that Putin must have compromise, meaning compromising information about President Trump.

- Yeah.

- What do you make of that?

- I don't believe it, okay.

What I think, okay, and I read about this in the book, is that Trump is susceptible to the idea that he can be the person who makes a really big deal, right?

- Yeah.

- I mean, he's a self-described master deal maker.

And so that's what he wants with his adversaries, right?

Our adversaries, you know, with Putin, with Xi Jinping.

But I think it's just naive to think that Vladimir Putin is going to change his character, or to divert from his overall objective, which is to restore Russia to national greatness and to do so by tearing everybody else down.

- I wanna play for you a series of things that Donald Trump has said he will do in a second Trump Administration.

Take a look.

- We will fight together, we will win together, and then we will seek justice together.

(crowd cheering) We're gonna seek justice for that.

These peopl shouled be put in jail the way they talk about our judges and our justices.

I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within.

And we have some very bad people.

We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.

And I think they're the, and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.

On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.

(crowd cheering) You know, getting them out will be a bloody story, should have never been allowed to come into our country.

So we're going to have to get in some military action, and we're gonna take, if we need military, look, they're killing 300,000 people a year.

- As a historian, one of the lessons you return to is that we should listen to what people say they will do when they hold power.

- Right.

- You have worked for Donald Trump.

When you see him saying those things, how seriously should we take it?

- Well, I think we should take it seriously.

I don't think he would mobilize the military against Americans, but I do think that what he's doing is undermining our confidence in our institutions at the very least.

That's what he's doing.

- But when he says he would mobilize the military against people in the United States, why do you think he wouldn't?

- Yeah, well, because I think there are checks on presidential power.

And I have confidence in the separation of powers.

They were stress tested on January 6th when he encouraged an assault on the first branch of government, you know, and on the peaceful transition of power.

And so we were stress tested before.

There were other times we've been stress tested in our history.

And I think we have to have confidence in our institutions.

The question is for me is, you know, I think the American people, and of course, I don't endorse candidates or anything like that, but I think the American people have to demand from our politicians that they stop compromising our confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes to score partisan political points, - Think about January 6th and the institutions that held that day.

When we think about the institution that held really in some ways, it was one person in the institution of the vice presidency.

JD Vance, I think was elected precisely because he would go along with Trump's plans, not stand up to Trump.

So if institutions are about people.

- Yeah.

- And the people around the president aren't the caliber of HR McMaster or Vice President Mike Pence, that gives me real pause.

- Yeah.

- How are Americans to account for that?

- Well, the way that Americans account for it is by who they put into office, right?

So I think that that's really the ultimate check on any candidate or power is the American voter.

So I think that we have to have more confidence in who we are as Americans, be more respectful with each other and maybe set a better example for our politicians, and not wait for the political class.

But also we have to demand better of that political class, to stop compromising the strength of our country to score these partisan points.

- You have warned about President Biden's diminished capacity and his lack of mental sharpness.

As a real risk for the country, Donald Trump is now older than Biden was when he took office and is increasingly prone to incoherence and confusion in his public appearances.

You write in your book that you sometimes question whether he could still handle the quote, sometimes grueling job of president in another term.

Watching him today, does that concern persist?

- Well, I think everybody has to make his or her own judgment about that.

What I'm trying to do, and I think is what's proper for me to do as a historian, but also as a retired military officer, is to tell the story and let every voter make his or her own judgment.

I mean, there's not a lot about Donald Trump that you don't like see.

That's one of the things about him, right?

You show that montage.

That's who he is.

- Yeah.

- Right?

There's not like a big filter there between candidate Trump and the real Trump.

What you see is what you get with that guy.

- In 1998, you were a guest on the original "Firing Line", and you talked with William F. Buckley Jr about exposing the lies that led to Vietnam.

Take a look at a younger HR McMaster.

- These are lies and they're interesting in that they're lies not just because they're untruths, but because they have very real consequences that seem to lead inextricably in retrospect to an American war in Vietnam.

But if we had substituted even a modicum of honesty in this period, at several of these turning points, an American war in Vietnam was not only not inevitable, but it would've been impossible.

- It really feels like the transcendent theme here, from the book, from that appearance is that telling the truth matters.

- Absolutely, it matters, you know.

And what happens is if you sweep something under the carpet, or you try it, you're not honest with the president, that problem will grow and grow.

And it'll come back to do tremendous harm later.

- Even really outspoken about January 6th and President Trump's undermining of his oath to the Constitution after that day.

I wanna show you a montage of things Donald Trump has said he will do after this election about the counting of the vote.

Take a look.

- Just watch for the voter fraud, because we win.

Without voter fraud, we win so easily.

They cheat like dogs, they cheat so badly.

It's the only thing they do well, they cheat.

Their policies are no good, their government is no good.

Their management is no good, but they cheat like nobody can cheat.

If there was no cheating, if God came down from a high, and said, I am going to be your vote tabulator for this election, I would leave this podium right now.

All they want to do is cheat.

And when you see this, it's the only way they're gonna win.

And we can't let that happen.

And we can't let it happen again.

- Does that give you a pause?

- Absolutely.

It should give all us pause.

- Yeah.

- You know and I think that what is really damaging these days is that we've become like our own worst enemy.

It's one of the themes in the book is "At War With Ourselves", right?

- Yeah.

- This demagoguery, on both sides of the political spectrum, Donald Trump takes everything to an extreme, right?

- Yeah.

- But there's demagoguery I think really across the political spectrum.

- It isn't equal though.

- And we just have to call it out.

- There's only one candidate who's saying that if he doesn't win, it will be because it was stolen from him.

- That's absolutely, that's absolutely right.

- And I don't think it's fair to say apples to apples, they're both doing it, 'cause they're not only one candidate.

- Well, you know, I do think though, if you look at undermining of institutions, there has been behavior, right, in both political parties that have compromised our confidence in our institutions.

Donald Trump, as I mentioned, everything with him is to a whole different level.

- Yeah.

- And I think that what we need to demand from all of our politicians and including Donald Trump, is that they strengthen our institutions rather than tear them down.

- You are a civilian now.

You never voted for president as long as you were part of the military.

- Right.

- Only as a civilian in 2020 did you first vote for president.

- That's right.

- But you feel very strongly personally that it's important to you to not weigh in on your political preferences directly.

- Right.

- Although I would just add, if somebody read your book clearly, they would see real doubt about your confidence in returning Donald Trump to the President.

But that's just my interpretation of your book.

Why is that so important to you?

- I think it's so important that there's this bold line, you know, between our military as an institution, and any kind of partisan politics.

And it's why we swear an oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States.

Donald Trump was my seventh commander in chief who I served.

And I think that it's, can you imagine if the military got infected with the kind of partisanship we see these days?

And of course it's happened, you know, with Donald Trump saying, these are my generals and so forth.

And I think the message should be, hey, hands off the military and help keep that bold line in place.

- The end of your 13 months in the National Security Council for Donald Trump, as you were packing up your office, your administrative assistant said, there's one more call you have to take.

And that call was from Senator John McCain.

Why was it important for you to end your book with that conversation from Senator McCain?

- Well, you know, the book is about the rewards of service and the importance of selfless service.

Nobody personified that better than John McCain, right?

Somebody who had suffered tremendously for our nation as a prisoner of war.

He was brutally tortured.

And then in his public service life, right, he always did what he thought was right, you know, regardless of what the consequences were for him as an individual.

And so I told this story because it was quite moving for me at the moment, and it is now even recalling it.

He wanted his phone call to me to be the last one I took when I was in the job.

And he said to me, you know, he said, I admire you, General.

And I said, no, Senator, I admire you.

And it was just an example at the end of the book that I wanted to use of service and humility.

He was an extraordinarily humble person, well-motivated person and a selfless person.

And I mean, I think we could all use some of that, you know, in our public servants.

Somebody who's in the job just to make a contribution for their fellow citizens, and to build a better future for generations to come.

And that's the kind of person he was.

- HR McMaster, thank you for your service to our country and for joining me here on "Firing Line", again.

- Thank you, Margaret, it was great to be with you.

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