H.R. McMaster

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133 appearances 4 recordings 4 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard May 2025

H.R. McMaster’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Honestly with Bari Weiss · H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly · 16 Jan 2025 podcast

It was late at night. I was in there on another matter. And he gave it to me. And I tell the story in the book. And it was at the same time as we were discovering really the cause of the Skripal poisoning. Remember the use of the nerve agent in Salisbury, England? in an attempt to murder Sergei Skripal and contaminate him and his daughter, it put tens of thousands of people at risk.

Killed a woman later who picked up a perfume bottle later, yeah. So I brought it down to the staff secretary who runs all the paperwork that would have sent this to the Russian embassy to go there. And I said, hey, don't send this until I tell you to send it. And just held it with them. And then as everything came to light, I came back to the president.

I just told him, I said, hey, you know, remember that article he told me to send? I didn't send it, you know. And he was angry with me. And I said, hey, listen.

Well, I mean, not yelling, but he was clearly angry. You know, you should do what I tell you to do, General. Damn it. You know, something like that. And I said, hey, you have to know I did this for you because, you know, Putin would have used this thing against you. or to kind of escape responsibility for the Skripal poisoning and muddy the waters associated with it, embarrass you, you know?

So, and then he moved on to something else, you know? And didn't get angry about it again. But I mean, these sorts of tensions, you know, kind of wear you down with them a little bit over time. And I think you had a choice.

Like what you could do is, you know, you could just try to take that kind of the ingratiate yourself path and, you know, the praise path and everything and keep your job, you know. But then that begs the question, what the hell good is it your job anyway, right? If you're not going to tell the president what you think, you know, he should hear from his national security advisor.

So I was at peace with being slowly ground down, which is part of the idea. Part of the story in the book. And I consider it a privilege to do it every day, really. I mean, I don't think I would have. I mentioned the book. I would do it again. If I could go back to walking down Walnut Street, which I opened the book with here, getting the phone call to come interview, I would do it again.

Although President Trump and I are used up with each other. I'm never going to serve him directly again. But I hope he succeeds, as I'm sure we all do, right? We need the President of the United States to succeed.

No, so there were four candidates for the job in Mar-a-Lago on President's Day weekend in 2017. John Bolton. was interviewing with the president in the second interview just before me. I didn't know that. There had been a down selection after our first interview on Sunday. I was held over for a second interview on Monday.

I didn't know who else was there until I run into John Bolton in the men's room on the way into that rather understated living room in Mar-a-Lago. You know, I was just an ambassador general, you know. And then when he was on his way out, I was on my way in.

and President Trump will tell a story, but he walks across the living room and says, oh, no need for another interview, you're hired, and they start to talk about how to announce it.

Well, it was kind of an extended audition. And people around Ambassador Bolton were some of the people kneecapping me from the various groups, a whole sort of ecosystem that I didn't really even know existed around Washington. He was very strong on Iran, which I think I was too.

But they would come after me when I was giving the president advice to not pull out of the Iran nuclear deal immediately. He could do it whenever the heck he wanted. But I said, you have a lot of leverage right now. Once you're out of the deal, you're going to lose that leverage.

So why not use staying in the deal temporarily to get the Europeans and others to impose more sanctions on the Iranians for their behavior outside of the Iran nuclear deal and choke them off? And then wouldn't it be great if Iran themselves get out of the nuclear deal because it's not doing what they want it to do? So we gave that a shot.

But of course, this led to a lot of criticism from Ambassador Bolton and mainly the people who were advocating for him to be the national security advisor. Because what happens, and I realize this kind of... later, is they're all really these informal lobbying groups that kind of form around this particular person to get a person in the job.

And what they try to do is activate anybody who has the president's ear to get in the president's ear. Oftentimes, these are the biggest donors. You know, for example, he'll have called the president, you really need to get rid of that guy, McMaster, and you need Bolton, damn it, you know. And so that's what was happening behind the scenes. And I described him in the, you know,

in the book is kind of like the dog that caught the car, man. Because the president kept saying, well, what do you think about John? Because the president and I had a lot of really sincere, good conversations about when I would leave. I said, if this isn't working out, I'm fine with leaving whenever you want me to leave. And he would say, well, who do you think would be a good successor?

And I would give him some names. And he'd always say, what do you think about John? What do you think about John? And I said, hey, if you trust him, If you think he's going to give you the best advice and advance your agenda, then he's the right person. He even said it to Katie the last day in the Oval Office. We're leaving in the White House on my last day.

And the president had my wife and I and my daughter and one of my daughters and sons-in-law and some nieces and nephews into the Oval Office. And he even asked Katie, he goes, hey, what do you think about John? She said, I don't know. who do you mean, like John Kelly? She's like, no, John Bolton. I said, okay. Katie said, well, yeah, you picked him. I hope you like him.

No, but I think that's what he did when he was building buildings in New York. He talks to the construction people. You see him at Mar-a-Lago, right? He talks to staff about the event that they're going to host at Mar-a-Lago or whatever. It's kind of his style. And John Bolton is an extremely competent person. He's extremely articulate. He's very knowledgeable about all the...

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