Trump, His National Security Advisor, and the 2024 Vote

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — .“I told Trump how Putin had duped Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ‘Mr. President, he is the best liar in the world.’ I suggested that Putin was confident he could ‘play’ Trump and get what he wanted – sanctions relief and the United States out of Syria and Afghanistan on the cheap – by manipulating Trump with ambiguous promises of a ‘better relationship.’ He would offer cooperation on counterterrorism, cyber security and arms control.” 

That was H.R. McMaster, from his recent book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. McMaster was then National Security Advisor, briefing then-President Donald Trump on the eve of his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 7, 2017, on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany. 

McMaster, a three-star Army general with 33 years in service, held the White House job for 13 months before he was fired by Trump after, as he put it, “my relationship with him had become fraught.” 

Early in the book, McMaster describes Trump as “unconventional and impulsive. Sometimes, his impulses were good. Other times, to use one of his turns of phrase, ‘not so good’.” McMaster writes that on his first day on the job, February 22, 2017, as he walked toward the Oval Office to attend his first President’s Daily [intelligence] Briefing, Mike Pompeo, then CIA Director, “highlighted two aspects of Trump’s worldview that were problematic: he undervalued alliances, and he tended toward moral equivalency when discussing threats from authoritarian hostile powers.” 

With Trump running again for re-election and the race being close – and those two anecdotes fresh in my mind — I decided to share some examples from McMaster’s book when Trump as President was dealing with other leaders, specifically Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, since it’s possible he could soon be President again, and in that role a second time. 

Trump and Putin 

Trump met first with Xi at Mar-a-Lago just three months after he became President; I will cover that below. What McMaster has described about the first Trump-Putin meeting is more revealing, I believe. 

McMaster wrote that in 2017, he had spoken to Trump “several times” before arriving in Hamburg about what Putin hoped to get out of their meeting, including relief from U.S. economic sanctions; Washington’s abandonment of Ukraine; removal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan; and a discrediting of the U.S. intelligence community and its so-called “Russiagate” findings. 

At their final prep in Hamburg, McMaster wrote that Trump “was getting impatient with my ‘negative vibe.’” 

Prior to meeting foreign leaders, U.S. Presidents normally get intelligence briefings about the person they are about to meet. McMaster wrote that “profilers and psychological operational officers at Russia’s intelligence services must have been working overtime,” preparing Putin to meet Trump.  

McMaster was not at the first Trump-Putin meeting, which ran over two hours. It was only the two Presidents, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and an American and a Russian translator. 

McMaster later received a readout from both Trump and Tillerson, and said their briefings “revealed the string of lies and deceptions I had anticipated from Putin.” 

McMaster wrote, “Unsurprisingly, he [Putin] claimed [to Trump] that Ukraine had been a part of Russia since the sixteenth century, that he had to protect Russian speakers in the east from Ukraine’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. He also played down North Korea’s ICBM test, claiming that Pyongyang was not close to developing a nuclear weapon or ICBM. We should not worry about [North Korean President] Kim [Jong-un], Putin advised, because the regime would resolve itself if we just opened the border and got the North Korean economy going.” 

McMaster continued: “On Syria, the Russian leader went beyond false promises on Iran and safe zones to predict that [Syrian Leader Bashar al-] Assad would transition out of power. Beyond offering a ‘cyber working group,’ Putin gave Trump ‘his word’ that he had never looked at any of the classified information that Edward Snowden had stolen and given to Wikileaks.  

“To appeal to Trump’s optimistic interpretation of U.S.-Soviet WWII alliance,” McMaster wrote, “Putin showed Trump a video of Russia’s Northern Fleet salvaging the USS Thomas Donaldson to keep alive the pipe dream of conciliation with Putin’s Kremlin.” 

Putin also “suggested moral equivalent of U.S interventions in Latin America and Russian invasion of Ukraine,” McMaster wrote. “Putin cited the ‘[Theodore] Roosevelt Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” in which  Roosevelt said the U.S. could intervene in a country’s internal affairs if the country engaged in chronic wrongdoing. 

At the conclusion of the subsequent opening night dinner, McMaster writes that Trump approached Putin, who had been seated next to Melania Trump, and the two presidents spoke through Russia’s translator, since each country had only one translator at the dinner. 

The Trump/Putin post-dinner conversation went on for one hour;  only the Russian translator was present. 

Indicating this second meeting had been preset, McMaster wrote that at the post-dinner meeting, “Putin handed Trump a list of ideas for collaboration including development of an amusement park near Moscow. I wondered if the list would leak, or he planned to leak it later.” 

The Trump White House at first claimed it was just a brief conversation at the end of dinner, and later Trump tweeted, “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is ‘sick.’ All G20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!” 

In a later press conference, Tillerson said Trump had raised Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but that “President Putin denied such involvement.” But Tillerson did not say whether Trump accepted that assertion. Rather, Tillerson said Trump decided to move on because Russia would not admit blame. 

Trump later took possession of his interpreter’s notes from the 2017 Putin meeting, and instructed her not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. 

Another private meeting 

That post-dinner hour was not the only time Trump conversed with Putin with no other U.S. participant present. A year later, on July 16, 2018, Trump had a second private, two-hour meeting with Putin in Helsinki. No U.S. officials were present – only one U.S. and one Russian interpreter. It’s never been clear what happened during that Helsinki one-on-one conversation, but at the subsequent press conference Trump accepted Putin’s denial of interference in the 2016 election, despite the U.S intelligence community’s finding that Moscow had intervened in the vote.. 

“I think we need a readout on if there was any [private] agreement,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters after the 2018 Helsinki press conference. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said, “What I’m deeply concerned about, and warned the administration beforehand, was what happened in this one-on-one setting. If the President was willing to dismiss American concerns in public, what in the heck did he say in private?” 

Trump and Xi 

Trump’s first exposure to Chinese President Xi took place on April 6, 2017. 

During the 2016 campaign, Trump had accused China of unfair trade policies, criticized its island-building in the South China Sea, and accused Beijing of doing too little to constrain North Korea’s nuclear bomb efforts. Trump had also taken a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during the transition, and said the U.S.  might not adhere to the longstanding American “One China” policy. 

In a February 10, 2017, phone call, now-President Trump changed his view and agreed, at the request of President Xi, to honor the “One China” policy. Subsequent conversations led to a Tillerson trip to Beijing during which Trump assured Xi “of the Trump administration’s commitment to the principles of ‘no confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect, win-win cooperation,’” according to an editorial in Beijing’s English-language China Daily. 

Arrangements for a two-day summit at Mar-a-Lago followed, where, according to McMaster, the plan was for Trump to oppose Chinese efforts for primacy in the Indo-Pacific, insist on fair economic practices and try to convince Xi that denuclearization of North Korea was in the mutual interest of the U.S and China. 

Complicating the Xi meeting was the U.S. decision, coordinated with allies, to strike Syria because Assad had used nerve gas to murder scores of Syrian opposition civilians. After Trump and Xi held an initial one-on-one conversation, Trump was briefed on the Syria situation in a secure room and agreed to the military strike while standing in a Mar-a-Lago men’s room, according to McMaster. 

At the dinner that followed, Trump asked Xi to provide the history of China he had given during their earlier one-on-one conversation, which McMaster in his book described as heavy on China’s “century of humiliation,” and omitted “the great traumas and horrors that the Communist Party inflicted on the Chinese people.” 

McMaster wrote, “Trump’s lack of historical knowledge made him susceptible to Xi’s effort to generate sympathy from him and a party that had killed more of its own people than either Stalin or Hitler.” 

As has been publicized, after receiving a note that the U.S. attack on a Syrian base had been successful, Trump told President Xi about the strike as chocolate cake was served. McMaster added in his book, “Xi whispered back that Syria’s murder of innocents, including children, justified the use of force.” 

McMaster wrote that at the meeting that followed the next day, “Trump was direct. On North Korea, he told Xi that China ‘could solve the problem in two seconds’ if Xi wanted to.” However, McMaster wrote, “Xi remained customarily stone-faced in formal meetings, but his expression shifted, and I thought Trump may have been getting through.” In fact, McMaster wrote, “The Chinese delegation agreed that North Korea was a threat to the world, denuclearization was the only acceptable outcome, and maximum pressure was an appropriate response.” 

Although McMaster wrote the team at the meetings had performed as a well-oiled machine, “that collaboration would over time break down under the friction divergent agendas, malicious actors and power struggles and from the heat of America’s vitriolic partisanship.” 

Trump’s next exposure to Xi came as part of a 13-day Asian trip in November 2017, with, as McMaster described him, a President who hated long trips and who was preoccupied with his domestic political agenda and Russiagate.” 

The first stop was Japan and meeting with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whom McMaster described as “the world leader most adept at forging a positive relationship with Trump.” Why? Because when Trump landed in Tokyo, “Trump joined Abe and Japanese golf pro Hideki Matsuyama at the Kasumigaseki Country Club fort a round of 18 holes, followed by another Trump favorite, a hamburger.” 

In South Korea, however, Trump resurrected his view that the U.S.-South Korea alliance was one-sided. At one point, Trump asked Gen. Vince Brooks, commander U.S. Forces Korea, why South Korea, which had paid $9.8 billion, had not paid 100 percent of the $10.8 billion cost of Camp Humphrey, a new base for American forces in Korea? 

McMaster wrote that Brooks was further “surprised when Trump stated that the agreement [for the Seoul government to pay the salaries of 8,600 Korean nationals to support Camp Humphrey] should be the equivalent of a cost-plus contract with the South Koreans reimbursing all U.S. costs plus a profit margin.” 

At the state dinner in Seoul, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, according to McMaster, demonstrated that he “knew how to get close to the American President, stating that ‘Trump’s election victory one year ago is already making America great again.’” 

McMaster wrote that Trump’s two-day trip to China, which the Chinese were calling a “state visit plus,” was designed to show the Chinese people and the rest of the world “that the Communist Party was all powerful and the balance of power was shifting away from the United States.” 

Doing as Xi pleased 

Xi, like other leaders, had been studying Trump to determine how to manipulate him into statements and actions to advance the Chinese leader’s own agenda. McMaster wrote he told Trump, “Most of all, he [Xi] wants you to endorse a ‘new kind of great power relationship to suggest that you endorse Chinese primacy in Asia.” 

After a tour of the Forbidden City, a welcoming ceremony overlooking Tiananmen Square, and a military parade, Trump and his team entered the Great Hall of the People for the first restricted bilateral discussion. There, McMaster wrote, “Xi launched into a list of complaints ranging from U.S. air and naval movements through the South China Sea to ownership of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands.” 

Xi signaled unwillingness to impose costs on North Korea sufficient for the  maximum pressure campaign to work,  and suggested it would be acceptable if North Korea simply froze its nuclear and missile programs. 

As Trump began to speak, McMaster wrote, “I experienced a wave of apprehension that caused a sinking feeling in my stomach. The President agreed with Xi that military exercises with South Korea were ‘provocative’ and described them as a ‘waste of money.’ Even worse, he seemed to agree with Xi’s suggestion of a return to freeze-for-freeze [with North Korea].” 

Trump had ignored prepared talking points on Xi’s complaints and, McMaster wrote, “gave the impression of U.S. ambivalence over countering the People’s Liberation Army aggression across the region. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, Trump offered to mediate on the Senkakus, implying that China had a legitimate claim to be adjudicated.” 

Trump’s comments were so divorced from U.S. policy that McMaster wrote he hoped they’d be lost in translation. “At least his comments were not public,” McMaster wrote. 

The Asian trip concluded with a speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Danang, Vietnam, which McMaster said, “could not have gone better.” 

However, after McMaster briefed Trump on the next day’s activities that included travel to Hanoi and a state banquet with North Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, McMaster wrote that Trump asked, “Why do I have to do this? This is your fault, General.” 

McMaster made clear the Asia trip was the beginning of the end for his time serving Trump. 

A question of expertise 

Two additional thoughts that McMaster portrayed early in his book have stuck with me as symbolic as any in gaining an understanding of Trump, and perhaps his greatest weaknesses. 

In a discussion about Afghanistan, McMaster described how Trump had always wanted to get the U.S. out of that country because “an unnamed ‘friend who is a real military expert’ had said that a Taliban victory was inevitable because ‘Afghans are the toughest fighters.’”  

McMaster concluded that “Trump found it difficult to distinguish between those who brought him sound analysis and those, real or imagined, who brought him hackneyed bromides.” 

In another case, McMaster said that meetings such as the presentation of the President Daily Brief and others with staffers and even Cabinet members became “exercises in competitive sycophancy. Some advisors tried to outdo one another with obsequious compliments to the President and attestations to his wisdom.” 

McMaster again concluded, “Trump’s insecurities and desire for attention left him perpetually distracted and vulnerable.” 

These are things worth thinking about as the presidential election approaches. 

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. 

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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