Long before John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, the president often trusted the Fox News contributor over his own national security team. On July 17, when President Trump reversed himself at the last minute on his plan to recertify the Iran deal, it was thanks to an op-ed from John Bolton. As Trump was hitting the Congress-imposed deadline, he reluctantly agreed to recertify the deal, despite his own gut feeling that the United States should get out of the deal.
Steve Bannon, then one of the few opponents of recertification in the senior White House staff, gave Trump an article Bolton had published the previous day, which had the headline “Trump Must Withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal—Now.” The hawkish former U.N. ambassador urged Trump to ignore the advice of nearly all of his national security advisers and relevant Cabinet members. With hours before the announcement, Trump decided he would no longer recertify the deal.
Communications aides who had spent hours drafting talking points explaining the president’s decision to recertify the deal, despite a campaign promise that dismantling would be his top priority, quickly wrote a new set of talking points explaining the president’s decision not to recertify the deal. Top national security advisers scrambled to convince him to reverse his reversal, and the likes of Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and H.R. McMaster ultimately prevailed that day.
Two of those three officials are now gone. Tillerson announced last week that he’d be leaving the administration, fired unceremoniously by Trump via tweet. And on Thursday evening, Trump named Bolton to succeed McMaster as national security adviser.
I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security Advisor. I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. There will be an official contact handover on 4/9.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018
As he did in his Iran op-ed from last summer, Bolton has used his perches at Fox and elsewhere to try guiding the president toward more hawkish stances, casting them as fulfillments of Trump’s own pledges and true beliefs. But before he was on the president’s radar for a White House job, Bolton was telling people privately that Trump was “17th out of 17” for his choices during the 2016 Republican primary.
McMaster, a three-star general, said in a statement that he will request retirement from the Army “effective this summer.” His departure from the White House was a long time coming. A replacement for Mike Flynn, Trump’s first NSA who resigned after a short stint, McMaster did not have the close and personal relationship with the president. Trump would often complain that McMaster talked down to him or provided too much unnecessary detail in his briefings.
McMaster also had forces within the administration working against him. Bannon, for one, saw McMaster as an opponent who helped keep the former chief strategist off the National Security Council. Allies of Bannon waged an outside (and sometimes internal) PR campaign against the general throughout most of last summer. In addition, McMaster and the NSC often clashed with Jim Mattis and the Pentagon over policy and procedure. McMaster, for instance, was much more accomodating and supportive of Trump’s eventual decision to decertify the Iran deal, which Mattis and Tillerson opposed.
The 55-year-old McMaster is considering among his next steps a move to California and possibly the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank based at Stanford University.
