HR McMaster Talks Trump’s First Term « Quotulatiousness

In RodeLiz Wolfe discusses some of the puzzling statements former National Security Advisor HR McMaster made about her work for Donald Trump:

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

What might a second Trump White House look like? In his new book, At War with Ourselves: My Service in the Trump White HouseLt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser for a year, characterizes the Oval Office meetings as “exercises in competitive flattery,” with advisers greeting him with phrases like “your instincts are always right” or “never has anyone been treated so badly by the press.”

Trump, meanwhile, came up with crazy ideas and launched them: “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” (Also: “Why don’t we take out the entire North Korean army during one of their parades?”)

This is, of course, one man’s story. McMaster’s words should not be taken as gospel, and some of his frustration may stem from his resignation, or from the fact that his foreign policy prescriptions were sometimes ignored by his boss. But it is a somewhat revealing look behind the scenes at policymaking in a White House led by a particularly erratic commander in chief who “reveled in and contributed to interpersonal drama in the White House and throughout the administration.”

It also shows how quickly Trump’s fantasies have seeped into the Republican Party, namely the “let’s just bomb Mexico to get rid of the cartels” line that Trump has been toying with since about 2019 (or perhaps more like in 2017, after he spoke to Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines, who had promised to kill 100,000 drug traffickers in his first six months in office). A few years earlier, in 2015, he had suggested that Mexico was sending rapists and drug traffickers across its southern border and that we should build a wall between the two countries, but it wasn’t until nine American citizens were murdered in Mexico that Trump floated the idea of ​​declaring cartels foreign terrorist organizations and using military force to wipe them out.

Trump’s 2019 statement has now become standard, notes The economist: The Republican primary debates featured a lot of tough talk on Mexico, particularly on the bombing front, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claiming he would send special forces there on day one. Right-wing think tanks have embraced the message, with articles headlined “It’s Time to Go to War on Transnational Drug Cartels.” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene followed suit with other members of her party requested why “we’re having a war in Ukraine, and we’re not bombing the Mexican cartels.” Whether it’s economic protectionism (10 percent across-the-board tariffs, with 60 percent tariffs on Chinese imports) or bombing Mexico, Trump has almost magical powers to make other members of his party accept something that was previously considered absurd.