What’s going on at the National Security Council? Eli Lake at Bloomberg View reports that President Trump himself has “clashed” with National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster “in front of his staff.” And it’s not just the president, Lake writes:
That appointment is for deputy national security advisor. K.T. McFarland, who holds the spot, has been looking to exit the White House to become the U.S. ambassador to Singapore since the beginning of April. McMaster, Lake reports, has tried to bring on Army general Ricky Waddell to succeed McFarland, but Priebus has so far blocked Waddell. That’s because McMaster did not properly seek approval through the White House’s chain of command, including (as Lake reports) by requesting approval of Priebus. But I’m told Waddell isn’t necessarily blocked from the job permanently—it could be delayed from McMaster’s desire to have a Waddell as his new deputy by May 10.
In a statement provided to Lake, the president himself dismissed any of the drama around McMaster. “I couldn’t be happier with H.R. He’s doing a terrific job,” Trump said.
And that’s the view among the senior staff at the White House, according to Hope Hicks, the director of strategic communications. “Everyone believes H.R. McMaster is doing an incredible job, especially the president,” said Hicks in an email to me.
It’s a much rosier picture than Lake’s sources provide, but it’s one McMaster himself described to me in a recent interview. The three-star general said the administration’s broad national-security team as a group coming together after a rocky start following the aborted tenure of Michael Flynn, McMaster’s predecessor.
“I only get glimpses of the inside-baseball stuff that’s going on, because obviously there are other things I’ve got going on,” McMaster told me. “It’s just extremely, extraordinarily talented people that we have in these NSC directorates. And it’s not only the depth and breadth of knowledge they have in their areas, but it’s the relationships they’ve developed across all their departments and agencies, and the trust that they’ve built up.”
McMaster also described a learning curve that he felt he and his team had already overcome. “Just from a historical perspective, every White House staff, every National Security Council has to make changes and modify how it does things based on the preferences and the personality of the president and those he brings in to assist him with implementing his agenda,” he said. “So what we’ve done in the National Security Council is we’re not going to try to change the president to meet the NSC processes. What we’ve done is we’ve adapted how the NSC operates to best serve the president and his key advisers to help him advance his agenda.”
