Gen. McMaster’s blistering account of the Trump White House

Until now, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has held his fire about his stint in the Trump White House. McMaster served with distinction in key American conflicts of the past decades: the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War, but as McMaster recounts in his new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” in some ways, his most challenging tour as a soldier was his last one: serving as the national security adviser to a notoriously mercurial president.

Until now, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has held his fire about his stint in the Trump White House. McMaster served with distinction in key American conflicts of the past decades: the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, but as McMaster recounts in his new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” in some ways, his most challenging tour as a soldier was his last one: serving as the national security adviser to a notoriously mercurial president. In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” during which Trump’s advisers would flatter the president by saying stuff like, “Your instincts are always right” or, “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” Meanwhile, Trump would say “outlandish” things like, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” in Mexico or, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?” McMaster’s book, which focuses on Trump’s tenure as commander in chief, comes at a particularly timely moment, just as many Americans start to really consider whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would make a better commander in chief. In her acceptance speech for her nomination to the presidency at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Harris spent some of her speech trying to demonstrate her national security credentials. She talked, for instance, about the war in Gaza, saying that as president she would stand firm on the US alliance with Israel to “ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Harris also said that the Palestinians have “their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” With this speech, Harris was trying to thread a delicate needle between Americans who strongly oppose the war — many of them in her own party — and those who back Israel wholeheartedly. McMaster provides unique detail on Trump’s approach to foreign policy and — similarly to his successor in the national security adviser role, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, who wrote scathingly about the former president in a book published in 2020 — his account is likely to do little to reassure US allies about the prospects of a second Trump term. In addition to being a highly decorated officer, McMaster also has a doctorate in history. His first book, “Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam,” recounted the dismal history of how the top American generals told President Lyndon Johnson only what they thought he wanted to hear about the Vietnam War, rather than giving him their best military advice about how the conflict was going and the full range of policy options that were open to their commander in chief.