Why is Trump still supporting McMaster?
Every day it becomes clearer why former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn was unmasked and the early target of a series of illegal leaks targeting Team Trump. Flynn was an unabashed critic of President Barack Hussein Obama and someone who would take a bullet for Trump in any political battle. He had to be dispensed with and someone less loyal to Trump and more accommodating to the “resistance” put in his place.
That man was to be General H.R. McMaster, and the story of how he got to be President Trump’s National Security Adviser speaks volumes about his true loyalties. As journalist Caroline Glick notes in a recent article:
… there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara a Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.
And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.
Senator John McCain. That’s right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.
Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?
President Trump has expressed his continued support for McMaster, even after a letter McMaster sent to Benghazi liar and serial unmake Susan Rice was revealed in which McMaster said he was perfectly fine with a person who should be a target of her very own special prosecutor retaining her security clearance. As Fox News Politics reported on August 5:
President Trump gave H.R. McMaster a vote of confidence after the national security adviser's rivals seized on a letter McMaster sent to his Obama predecessor Susan Rice giving her continued access to classified information….
Trump issued a statement late Friday supporting McMaster.
"General McMaster and I are working very well together," the statement read. "He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country."
McMaster already had been in the spotlight for the series of firings he’s ordered on the National Security Council. Most recently, he ousted Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council who had been viewed as a Trump loyalist.
But Circa first reported Thursday that McMaster sent a letter giving Rice access to classified material, weeks after her alleged role was disclosed in ‘unmasking’ identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports.
McMaster may have served his country well while in uniform, but he is not serving his country well as National Security Adviser. McMaster insists the letter to Rice was a pro forma letter sent to every former national security adviser and every former president. But Susan Rice’s record is anything but pro forma and precedent can be broken, especially when the individual arguably should be in jail and not in public service.
McMaster’s activities and personnel decisions belie his loyalty to the current administration and certainly question his alleged pro-Israel credentials.
McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.
Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump’s visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – ?????? ?????? and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall.
What hasn’t been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn’t. It was McMaster.
And even that, it works out wasn’t sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial — ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.
McMaster’s actions have raised the question of just whose side he is on. As has been noted here, McMaster has retained all of former staffers that Ben Rhodes installed, when he was Obama’s assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. The question of who is leaking classified information for political purpose remains.
That under covered story was brought up by retired U.S. Army Col. Tony Schaffer on Lou Dobbs show on Fox Business:
Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama’s staff are still in the National Security Council. H.R. McMaster has not fired any of them. Instead he fired the man who agrees with Trump’s agenda, Col. Harvey.
McMaster doesn’t see it as a problem.
“There’s no such thing as a holdover,” H.R. McMaster said back in July, referring to the career professionals who stayed on the council after the presidential transition. McMaster added that career staffers are loyal to the president.
Lt. Col. Schaffer reacted on Fox Business.
“One of the things I heard today was H. R. McMaster has not fired a number of people who worked for Obama. In fact those who worked for some of the staffers, Ben Rhodes for example, well Ben Rhodes has got, his staff is still there. It’s like having a rattle snake next to your bed and thinking some how if you’re just nice enough to the snake it’s going to be nice. It’s not like that.”
In a Facebook post, Glick, comments on McMaster’s keeping of Ben Rhodes staff members while purging Trump loyalists:
McMaster disagrees and actively undermines Trump's agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda. He fires all of Trump's loyalists and replaces them with Trump's opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes' and Valerie Jarrett's people in place.
Trump appreciates loyalty and is loyal to those who faithfully share his agenda. Clearly H.R. McMaster does not fit the bill. Trump’s loyalty to him is misplaced and a good step in draining the swamp would be to summon McMaster and utter those famous words, “You’re fired!”
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.