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America's Divided Soul: Inside the Trump White House
The Secret Service agent's voice crackled through the phone at 4:30 p.m. on March 22, 2018: "Hello, General. I am calling to let you know that I have decided to go with John [Bolton]." With those words, H.R. McMaster's thirteen-month tenure as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump came to an abrupt end. McMaster's book "At War with Ourselves" offers a rare insider's perspective from a decorated military officer thrust into the chaotic center of Trump's administration. Unlike many Trump-era memoirs, McMaster approaches his account with the methodical analysis of the historian he is, avoiding partisan agenda or personal vendettas. The book became an instant New York Times bestseller upon its 2024 release, praised across the political spectrum for its measured tone and thoughtful insights. McMaster's unique position-serving a president he neither idolized nor despised-allows readers a nuanced window into an administration that operated like a battlefield, where America's internal divisions played out daily within the White House walls.
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The Reluctant Advisor: From Battlefield to West Wing
When Michael Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor in February 2017, McMaster received an unexpected call from the White House while walking through the historic streets of Philadelphia. The timing was particularly striking - he had been discussing military strategy at the University of Pennsylvania just hours before. Despite numerous warnings from colleagues and friends about serving under the controversial president, McMaster found himself reflecting on the wisdom of his longtime mentor William Coyle: "Some people hate Trump so much that they want him to fail. But he's the president of the United States. We can't afford for him to fail." This sense of duty, deeply ingrained from his decades of military service, propelled McMaster to accept the position.
At their first meeting at Mar-a-Lago, McMaster strategically chose to discuss his book "Dereliction of Duty" with Trump, explaining how President Johnson's advisors had fundamentally failed him during the Vietnam War by telling him what he wanted to hear rather than what he needed to know. This resulted in a flawed Vietnam strategy doomed to failure. McMaster drew direct parallels to the present, emphasizing the critical importance of providing the president with thorough analysis and multiple viable options for informed decision-making. Trump, who appeared engaged throughout the discussion, seemed particularly receptive to this straightforward approach.
The interview took an unexpected turn when Trump asked if McMaster played golf. With characteristic directness, McMaster admitted that Air Force officers would make better partners, suggesting his preference for substance over social pleasantries. When prompted by Steve Bannon, McMaster shared the dramatic story of the Battle of 73 Easting from the Gulf War, where his cavalry troop destroyed an entire Iraqi Republican Guard brigade. He included a compelling anecdote about a captured Iraqi commander who was bewildered to find American soldiers carrying pictures of German Field Marshal Rommel in their tanks - a testament to the historical knowledge and professional study of U.S. forces. Trump's hearty laugh and immediate job offer suggested the story had sealed the deal.
Looking back, McMaster recognized several critical warning signs he'd overlooked in his haste to serve. Trump's failure to inquire about McMaster's vision for the national security advisor role would prove particularly problematic. The president's limited understanding of the position's scope and his tendency to create internal competition among staff members would later create significant challenges. When Trump proudly announced the appointment to the Mar-a-Lago press pool, McMaster maintained the steady resolve he'd developed through multiple combat deployments, knowing that anxiety before difficult missions was counterproductive. However, what he couldn't fully anticipate was that the Trump administration's internal dynamics would prove more challenging than any battlefield he'd encountered. Unlike the cohesive military units he'd led overseas, where shared mission and purpose created unity, the Trump administration was already deeply fractured, with various factions engaged in bitter internal warfare.
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A Clash of Cultures: Military Discipline Meets White House Chaos
On his first day as national security advisor, McMaster met with Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland, who warned him Washington would be "nothing like your experience in the military" and that "friends stab you in the chest"-echoing Newt Gingrich's warning about handling snakes in a snake pit. Meeting the anxious NSC staff, McMaster criticized Obama's flawed strategies regarding China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorist organizations. He promised to scrutinize assumptions, understand challenges, identify stakes, craft realistic objectives, and develop multiple policy options.
Unlike most national security advisors who rarely left the West Wing, McMaster made a point of visiting staff in their offices at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, applying Army leadership practices uncommon in the White House. He discovered problematic aspects of the Trump NSC organization, including the elevation of homeland security advisor Tom Bossert to equal status with the national security advisor, creating redundancies and confusion.
More controversially, Reince Priebus had used a red Sharpie to add Steve Bannon to the principals committee while removing the director of national intelligence and Joint Chiefs chairman-changes made before Flynn was aware. This political intrusion into national security matters concerned McMaster, who made a note to discuss it with the president.
McMaster's military background shaped his approach to the role. After his first day, he retired to a two-room apartment at Wainwright Hall at Fort Myer, military lodging named for General Jonathan Wainwright who had commanded the Third Cavalry Regiment seventy years before McMaster. Finding a stocked refrigerator and welcome note from an Army friend's wife reminded him that the Army community would remain a source of support in his new role.
His first full day began with reading disappointing Obama administration policy documents that confirmed his belief that U.S. strategic competence had atrophied post-Cold War. In a remarkable coincidence, his intelligence briefing included an assessment written by his daughter Katharine-which he praised before learning she was the author.
Mike Pompeo advised McMaster before the President's Daily Brief to give Trump quick, essential information through stories and warned him about two problematic aspects of Trump's worldview: undervaluing alliances and moral equivalency regarding authoritarian regimes. The PDB session itself became a "competitive sycophancy" exercise with phrases like "Your instincts are always right" as advisors vied for Trump's approval.
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Understanding Trump: The Man Behind the Presidency
McMaster quickly learned that Trump was open to new ideas but prone to changing his mind based on whoever spoke to him last. Trump shared traits with Lyndon Johnson-both had insecurities that left them vulnerable to media criticism and both had loose relationships with truth. Trump once pointed to his inauguration photo, insisting there were "many more people at my inauguration than Obama's," contrary to evidence.
Like LBJ, Trump belittled others to make himself seem bigger and hide his insecurities-though where Johnson used his physical presence, Trump preferred verbal means and mimicry. Trump's reality TV experience led him to pit people against each other, as he did with Bannon and McMaster, telling each of them different stories about decisions.
McMaster observed that Trump's character flaws undermined his presidency. Though capable of seeing complex situations and challenging assumptions, his conflicted worldview and insecurities made him vulnerable to manipulation. His obsession with critics distracted him from important tasks, while his inability to control his emotions allowed others to stoke his anger for their own agendas.
Trump's lack of basic governmental knowledge, combined with impatience for learning about senior officials' roles, limited his leadership effectiveness. When conflicts arose, he either avoided them or inflamed them further. Both Trump and LBJ wanted to be unrivaled protagonists in their own operas, and McMaster knew he would have to tell Trump what he didn't want to hear to fulfill his duty.
Despite these challenges, McMaster found Trump could be persuaded through direct, fact-based presentations. When discussing Afghanistan strategy, McMaster acknowledged failures to build credibility with Trump. Despite Trump frequently citing an unnamed "military expert" friend who claimed Taliban victory was inevitable because "Afghans are the toughest fighters," McMaster countered that the Taliban weren't romantic warriors but a ruthless terrorist organization funded by Gulf donors and narcotics, trained by Pakistan's ISI, and intertwined with al-Qaeda.
To help Trump understand Afghanistan's transformation since 2001, McMaster showed him photos of Kabul from the 1970s, during Taliban rule, and in 2017, demonstrating how life had returned after Taliban removal. This concrete visual evidence proved more effective than abstract policy arguments.
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The Internal Battlefield: Navigating White House Power Struggles
The early Trump administration was plagued by internal rivalries and chaos. In March 2017, McMaster discovered Bannon and Priebus had created a list of "holdover" NSC staff they planned to summarily fire. He immediately called White House counsel and confronted Priebus directly: "What the fuck do you two think you're doing?" In an Oval Office meeting, McMaster told Trump he would take responsibility for the NSC staff and leaks, pointing at Bannon and saying, "But I want him out of it." Trump agreed.
McMaster was disappointed that Keith Kellogg had known about the scheme without informing him. Though McMaster attempted to resolve tensions with a "beer summit" at Fort Myer, the divisions persisted. Despite the chaos, McMaster focused on establishing priorities and building his team. He recruited key members including Ricky Waddell as deputy national security advisor and emphasized trust in all-hands meetings, warning that "leaks destroy trust."
The White House intrigue extended to McMaster's relationships with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis. While initial meetings went well, tensions soon emerged. During a March 27 meeting with Tillerson and Brian Hook, it became clear that Tillerson interpreted the "Scowcroft model" as State Department primacy over foreign policy.
McMaster visited General Brent Scowcroft himself, who offered wisdom about navigating White House infighting, which he described as "not unprecedented." He warned McMaster to avoid the antagonistic relationship Brzezinski had with Secretary Vance, and reminded him firmly: "You are not junior to the secretary of defense. Don't act like it." Scowcroft emphasized McMaster's dual responsibilities: making the policy process work and advising the president with unfiltered views.
As time passed, McMaster realized that while Bannon had viewed his efforts to give Trump options as constraining the president from the alt-right agenda, Mattis and Tillerson viewed those same efforts as enabling a president they considered dangerous to the Constitution. Despite this, McMaster believed many of Trump's disruptions offered opportunities to challenge failing policy approaches.
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Foreign Policy Shifts: Confronting Adversaries and Reassuring Allies
Despite the internal turmoil, McMaster worked to develop coherent foreign policy strategies. After North Korea launched four ballistic missiles off Japan's coast, McMaster helped develop a "maximum pressure" strategy. He believed, contrary to conventional wisdom, that Kim Jong-un wanted nuclear weapons not just for deterrence but to potentially reunify the peninsula under Pyongyang's control.
With Tillerson and Mattis, McMaster presented Trump a timeline showing the historical pattern of North Korean provocations followed by U.S. concessions. They established three guiding principles: don't rush to negotiations, don't separate diplomacy from military options, and don't lift sanctions prematurely. Trump agreed with this approach, questioning whether China would help pressure North Korea, while connecting the issue to his broader concerns about trade imbalances.
When intelligence confirmed Assad's regime had used sarin gas against civilians in Khan Shaykhun, killing scores, McMaster developed eight key tasks for the U.S. response: destroy chemical weapons facilities, communicate willingness to escalate, position defensive forces, engage Russia and Iran, mobilize international opinion, inform Congress, minimize civilian casualties, and implement additional sanctions.
After preparing three options for responding to Assad's chemical attack, McMaster briefed Trump. At Mar-a-Lago, during a small group meeting in the men's room for privacy, Tillerson emphasized that inaction had eroded deterrence and emboldened Assad, and Trump decided "Let's do it." During dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping that evening, McMaster slipped Trump a note confirming the successful launch of fifty-nine cruise missiles. Trump informed Xi about the strike over chocolate cake, and Xi acknowledged that Syria's murder of innocents justified force.
McMaster also worked to strengthen alliances. During Romanian President Klaus Iohannis's visit, McMaster prepared Trump for inevitable questions about NATO's Article 5. Despite Bannon's dismissal that such questions wouldn't arise, McMaster insisted, telling Trump "An unambiguous 'yes' is worth two Army divisions in Europe." When asked, Trump committed to Article 5, though McMaster knew Putin's "useful idiots" would continue stoking Trump's alliance skepticism.
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The Grand Strategy: Competing with China and Russia
McMaster's most significant contribution was developing a comprehensive National Security Strategy that fundamentally shifted America's approach to global competition. The strategy emphasized competition without foreclosing cooperation but demanded reciprocity. With hindsight, its objectives proved prescient-improving border security, accelerating defense innovation, modernizing nuclear deterrence, pursuing energy dominance, and protecting supply chains-all validated by events like Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
McMaster positioned the strategy as more than an academic exercise, but as Trump's opportunity to articulate his policy shifts and overcome bureaucratic resistance. Trump enthusiastically embraced the strategy, which promoted a balance of power favoring the United States and its allies while acknowledging American values.
During Trump's first overseas trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Brussels, and Sicily, McMaster worked to align the president's speeches with strategic objectives, using them to introduce themes from the draft National Security Strategy. Despite media covering the administration like a soap opera, they were developing concrete initiatives like the Etidal center for combating extremism and sowing seeds for what would later become the Abraham Accords.
In China policy, McMaster led a fundamental shift away from engagement toward competition. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump's speech directly challenged unfair economic practices-particularly China's-declaring America would "no longer turn a blind eye" to intellectual property theft and predatory behaviors. While McMaster felt "Trump the globalist" effectively advanced American influence, media coverage remained skeptical, contrasting sharply with their previous fawning over Xi Jinping's 2017 appearance.
During Trump's Asia trip, McMaster warned the president that Xi would try to manipulate him into endorsing China's positions on Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands, the South China Sea, and a "new kind of great power relationship" implying Chinese primacy in Asia. McMaster had warned Trump about rhetorical traps Xi might set, explaining that phrases like "nonconflict, nonconfrontation, and mutual respect" perpetuated American passivity, and that "win-win" actually meant China won twice.
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Allies, Authoritarians, and Afghanistan: The Three A's
The "three A's"-allies, authoritarians, and Afghanistan-had become millstones grinding down McMaster's relationship with Trump. On allies, Trump questioned America's defense commitments, asking McMaster "Why are we defending people who hate us?" regarding South Korea. On trade, McMaster struggled to elevate discussions beyond tactics to strategy, particularly regarding KORUS (the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement) and tariffs. He and Gary Cohn repeatedly "jumped on grenades" rolled into the Oval Office by Bannon and Navarro, who labeled them "globalists." McMaster used a simple metaphor with Trump: "If we shoot our allies to get China, China wins."
Regarding authoritarians, McMaster worried about Trump's deference to leaders like Putin and Erdogan. When preparing Trump for his first meeting with Putin, McMaster warned him not to be manipulated and predicted exactly what Putin would want: sanctions relief, U.S. abandonment of Ukraine, withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan, and statements that would divide Americans. During their extended meeting, Putin deployed sophisticated psychological tactics, showing Trump a video of Russia salvaging a sunken American WWII ship to evoke nostalgia for U.S.-Soviet cooperation, citing the Roosevelt Corollary to justify Russian intervention in Ukraine, and even offering a list of collaboration ideas including a Moscow amusement park.
On Afghanistan, McMaster had written about poor Washington leadership failing in Vietnam, and now found himself partially responsible for what he judged a failing strategy in Afghanistan. Over Easter weekend 2017, he led a trip to South Asia to develop a new strategy, seeing strong parallels between U.S. approaches to Afghanistan (2001-2017) and Vietnam (1965-1973). Both wars suffered from misunderstanding what Clausewitz called "the kind of war on which they are embarking."
Despite obstacles from both the State and Defense Departments' unwillingness to abandon flawed assumptions and Trump's initial resistance to alternatives beyond withdrawal, McMaster successfully guided the process to a new approach. At Camp David, Deputy National Security Advisor Ricky Waddell presented the options while McMaster minimized his own role to avoid appearing as an advocate. The strategy Trump approved included expanding relations with India, removing time limits on U.S. military support for Afghan forces, lifting restrictions on U.S. forces, and ending the "delusion that Pakistan was an ally."
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The Final Days: Triumph and Dismissal
By early 2018, McMaster's position had become precarious. After the Munich Security Conference in February, McMaster delivered remarks emphasizing countering WMD proliferation and reforming international institutions. When questioned by a Russian Duma member about cyber-cooperation, he described Russian election interference evidence as "incontrovertible," a statement that infuriated Trump and likely accelerated his departure. Trump remained unable to separate acknowledging Russian interference from claims it affected election results.
In his final days, McMaster focused on unfinished business, particularly Russia's brazen nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Despite Trump's skepticism, he approved the strongest option: closing the Russian consulate in Seattle and expelling sixty undeclared intelligence officials. When Trump later threatened to reverse his decision upon learning of Europe's weaker response, Kelly intervened to maintain our position.
On March 22, 2018, while meeting with Afghanistan's national security advisor Haneef Atmar, McMaster received the expected call from the president ending his tenure. The next day, he addressed the NSC staff one final time, thanking them and highlighting their accomplishments while asking them to support Ambassador Bolton and President Trump after his departure.
McMaster met with his successor John Bolton in his office, showing him the meaningful artwork he'd selected and briefing him on four key priorities: North Korea, China, Russia, and Syria. He warned him about Trump's reluctance to confront Putin and his desire to withdraw from Syria. He cautioned that while Trump would make tough decisions when presented with good analysis, he'd grow resentful of advisors who pushed him beyond his prejudices.
On his final day, McMaster's family joined him in the Oval Office where Trump was gracious. As they left, Senator McCain called to express his admiration-despite his terminal brain cancer diagnosis. Walking out of the West Wing, McMaster and his daughter were surprised to find NSC and White House staff lining their path to the car, clapping and calling out farewells. As they drove away past the cherry blossoms in full bloom, McMaster reflected on how those who had fought alongside him had done their best to help America compete, renew its confidence, and build a better future.
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America at War with Itself: A Nation Divided
McMaster's account reveals how extreme polarization affects governance at the highest level. Donald Trump emerged from profound divisions in American society, reflecting deep cultural, economic, and political fault lines that had been widening for decades. Once in office, the forces he had exploited - populist anger, distrust in institutions, and cultural resentment - collided violently with those who opposed him, creating an unprecedented atmosphere of constant crisis. In the war with ourselves, Trump had become both protagonist and antagonist, simultaneously feeding off and being consumed by the nation's divisions.
Despite the White House's apparent chaos, Trump's administration implemented several long-overdue policy corrections. The National Security Council system, though often challenged, proved remarkably resilient and effective. Through comprehensive analysis and realistic strategic planning, it helped reshape foreign policies across multiple fronts. Significant achievements included a fundamental strategic shift in approaching China, recognizing it as a strategic competitor rather than just an economic partner; a firmer stance toward Russian aggression; a more coordinated approach to North Korea's nuclear threats; and enhanced pressure on Iran's regional ambitions. The administration also rebuilt relationships with Israel and key Arab states, leading to the Abraham Accords, and developed more sustainable counter-terrorism strategies focused on clear objectives rather than arbitrary withdrawal timelines.
However, Trump's mercurial nature and inconsistent decision-making later undermined many of these achievements. His tendency to abruptly reverse course, often via Twitter announcements that blindsided his own team, created foreign policy turbulence. The Biden administration subsequently compounded these problems through hasty policy reversals, particularly evident in the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal and the renewed approach to Iran. Trump's character flaws - especially his inability to maintain disciplined approaches to perception, action, and will - culminated in the tragic events of January 6, 2021, when his wounded ego and sense of betrayal led him to effectively abandon his constitutional responsibilities.
The senior national security team, including McMaster, struggled to establish effective working relationships. While McMaster managed to reduce tensions with Secretaries Tillerson and Mattis, deep-seated conflicts persisted. Both secretaries, experienced in their respective fields, prioritized maintaining tight control over their departmental policies rather than fostering genuine collaboration. Their fundamental lack of confidence in Trump, whom they viewed as dangerously impulsive and uninformed, severely hampered their collective ability to help the president make and maintain consistent decisions serving America's interests.
McMaster's experience vividly illustrates how America's internal divisions have compromised its capacity to address external challenges effectively. The metaphor of Clausewitz's "movement in a resistant element" took on new meaning as McMaster departed the White House - the resistance wasn't just from external adversaries but from within the American political system itself. The "circular firing squad" mentality that characterized the Trump White House reflected and amplified America's broader us-versus-them polarization, a destructive dynamic that continues to undermine national unity and strategic effectiveness today.
