President Trump is moving closer toward shaking up his administration in a big way, according to sources familiar with his thinking. The Washington Post reported Thursday night that Trump had decided to fire H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser. Shortly after the story broke, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the Post’s reporting on Twitter: “Just spoke to @POTUS and Gen. H.R. McMaster – contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC.” It was, notably, not a denial of the Post story or that President Trump had decided to remove McMaster from his position, though others have reported the decision is not so clear.
The president is also considering removing a number of his Cabinet officials, several of whom he’s grown concerned about over news reports that they have misused taxpayer dollars for travel or personal luxuries. Trump’s list of most imminent departures includes Ryan Zinke at Interior, Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development, and David Shulkin at Veterans Affairs. All three have faced scrutiny in recent weeks for outlandish spending, including Carson’s purchase of a $31,000 dining room set at the HUD building, Zinke’s $139,000 in door repairs, and Shulkin’s misleading ethics investigators over expensed travel for he and his wife. The coverage has apparently embarrassed Trump for undercutting his campaign pledge to “drain the swamp.”
Also earning the president’s ire is EPA director Scott Pruitt for the former Oklahoma attorney general’s apparent preference for first-class airline travel, though it’s not evident Pruitt is in the same precarious positions as the others. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, too, is always potentially on the chopping block.
But it’s McMaster’s possible departure that has the West Wing surprised, despite news reports for the last several weeks that Trump was considering it. The three-star Army general never had a warm relationship with the president, but National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton went on the record to deny those reports earlier this month. “I was just with President Trump and H.R. McMaster in the Oval Office,” said Anton on March 1. “President Trump said that the NBC News story is ‘fake news,’ and told McMaster that he is doing a great job.”
White House chief of staff John Kelly was telling people as recently as Wednesday morning that McMaster would stay on. McMaster, meanwhile, had been telling colleagues for weeks he would not resign and that if the president wanted him gone he’d have to fire him. In the last day or so, McMaster seems to have changed his mind and is now consulting with friends and allies about the possibility of resigning.
One More Thing—Speculation has been that John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador who has been a hawkish voice on Fox News and a semi-regular guest at the White House, is the frontrunner to succeed McMaster, but here’s another name to watch out for: Tom Bossert, the 42-year-old homeland security adviser at the White House.
In the brand new issue of the magazine, I have a profile of Peter Navarro, the chairman of the White House’s National Trade Council who has becoming something of a Trump whisperer on behalf of tariffs. Here’s an excerpt:
Trump Tweet of the Day
We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive). P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S.(negotiating), but they do…they almost all do…and that’s how I know!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2018
Mueller Watch—Via the New York Times: “Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization, Demanding Documents About Russia”
The Trump administration on Thursday announced long-awaited sanctions on 24 Russian entities and individuals in retaliation for Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, finally implementing the mandate Congress passed last August to punish Moscow for their destabilizing activities.
“This is just one of a series of ongoing actions that we’re taking to counter Russian aggression,” a senior administration official told reporters Thursday. “As Secretary Mnuchin has made clear a number of times, we’re using all available information to inform future actions, there will be more to come, and we’re going to continue to employ our resources to combat malicious Russian activity and respond to nefarious attacks.”
The sanctions announcement comes as the United States and its allies have begun to take a strong stance against Russian destabilization. Also on Thursday, the United States joined with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to condemn the apparent Russian poisoning of a former British spy in England earlier this month as “a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a breach of international law.”
Some of the targets of the new sanctions, such as the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, were included in special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment last month against Russian election meddlers. The indictment alleged that the IRA had spent 2016 encouraging resentment among American citizens during and after the 2016 election season, pitting racial and political groups against one another both online and in the real world through astroturfed protests.
By shining a light on Russia’s covert attempts to sow discord abroad, officials said, they hoped both to discourage further Russian meddling and inoculate the American people against such foreign propaganda in the future. “Propaganda and disinformation lose their effect if the American people are aware of the foreign actors attempting to manipulate them,” a senior official said. “And by shining a light on the covert foreign sponsorship of these activities, they become less likely to achieve their objectives.”
2018 Watch—Is Mississippi’s Senate seat, up for a special election later this year, really in danger of falling out of Republican hands? My colleague David Byler suggests it’s possible.
“It’s a strongly red, highly inelastic state—meaning that it usually votes for GOP candidates by a solid, reliable margin, regardless of which way the political winds are blowing,” Byler writes. “But if Mississippi Republicans catch multiple successive unlucky breaks, this seat could become a problem for them. On Wednesday, Chris McDaniel might have hit the GOP with that first unlucky break.”
Byler notes that McDaniel is a firebrand but no Roy Moore, who lost Alabama’s Senate seat in a special election late last year. But it’s an interesting exploration of how Mississippi’s unique system could set up the GOP to fail.
Photo of the Day

Donald Trump picks up a bowl of shamrocks as Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Vice President Mike Pence look on in the East Room of the White House March 15, 2018. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
The Justice Department is currently deciding whether to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe days before he is set to retire.
McCabe, whom President Trump frequently attacked as a partisan flack during his FBI tenure, has been on leave since January but had planned to officially retire in March in order to qualify for his full FBI pension. But that plan hit a serious snag Wednesday when the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility reportedly recommended McCabe be fired over allegations that he misled investigators about whether he talked to a reporter about the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation. CNN reported Thursday that McCabe was pleading his case at the Department of Justice, where the ultimate decision rests with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that the administration would respect Sessions’ decision but criticized McCabe’s “well-documented” bad behavior at the FBI. “We do think it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor, and should have some cause for concern,” Sanders said.
Column of the Day—From George F. Will: “The real Down syndrome problem: Accepting genocide”
Song of the Day—“The Dingle Berries” by Lúnasa