Michael Moynihan
speaker
842 appearances
21 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Michael Moynihan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Honestly with Bari Weiss · H.R. McMaster on Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly · 16 Jan 2025
podcast
Talk to me a little bit about what it is like in that environment. You were there the first year in the first administration and you read your book and you're like, good Lord, this is a nest of vipers. Everyone's trying to backstab and push people out, et cetera.
How would you describe just that year in a sort of broad sense of going from the military into the White House and being in a position where there's a lot of newbies there and people don't really know what they're doing. What was that like?
I mean, that's important because, you know, we talked about this beforehand and it's very clear in the book too, is that you see your job as somebody who has to go in there and implement the president's agenda. But it's clear in the book that you see people around you who have an agenda that they're trying to foist upon the president.
And they're saying, we need to contain this person because he's dangerous. I mean, there's a couple of people in the book that say, refer to Donald Trump as dangerous.
I mean, there's about 15 things I want to talk about there, but let's stay in the present for just a second and look at those picks. The reaction from a lot of people was, these are serious picks. I mean, you have the ones that are less serious, right? And probably concerning to you, people like Pete Hegseth, and it's not to say that he hasn't
been an impressive individual in his service in the military, but not a traditional pick, I would say. So when you look at these, I mean, do you see, you know, is there a balance that Donald Trump tries to create with kind of chaos agents and then you?
Like serious people who are like, I'm sure that when you were walking in Philadelphia that day, you opened your last two books with walking in Philadelphia and getting that call. And I'm sure it was slightly unexpected when you first heard that you were in consideration. But what is the logic here?
I mean, did it surprise you that like, you know, Wallace Rubio and some of these other serious picks?
Which is amazing.
You're standing in that position where you're like, I get what people are doing.
I mean, it's interesting. You end that on the base. It's in your book. I think it is Bannon and maybe Reince Priebus. We're talking about a line about Islamic terrorism. And you suggested, let's not talk about a faith of Islamic. Let's say it's Islamist. It's more specific. And Bannon gets angry with you, right? Was it Bannon who said? Well, it was just a way.
It was, I think, a way for him to try to. But he said the base is going to like that line.
And, you know, that's kind of how to get them on your side is that those people that come to your rallies, they want to hear this. And that seems to work. Did you find that that was the tactic that a lot of people used?
I want to talk about a word that is in your book probably more than any other word, including and and the. It is Bannon. Steve Bannon's name comes up a lot in this book, right? No, not that much. It's a lot. I did a count, but it's a lot. And look, I mean, it's a big part of the story because at War With Ourselves, one of those combatants is Steve Bannon.
And I know people have asked you a lot of things about this. The one question I am thinking when I'm reading this stuff, and he ends up leaving the administration before you, right?
And then is now back in, actually.
Yeah.
And what is the position now? Is the...
Yeah. But what do you attribute that hostility to? Because sometimes you have personnel, like personal disagreements, different styles. Is it an ideological thing? Because Bannon's kind of shifting views on foreign policy, for instance. Is that kind of where it came from?
Well, it's particularly weird because they've gone the other way on that issue recently. People on that kind of fringe of the party.
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