Preet Bharara:
From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.
H.R. McMaster:
President Trump, who was sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, abdicated that responsibility by encouraging an assault on the first branch of government. And I think that’s just a fact. He encouraged it for sure at a minimum.
Preet Bharara:
That’s retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. After 34 years in the military, he served as former president Donald Trump’s, National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. McMaster joins me this week to discuss his latest book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. It offers readers an inside look into Trump’s psychology and character and his orientation towards global conflict and the military. We also discuss the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and War in the Middle East.
Make sure to listen all the way to the end of this episode for a look back at some of the more memorable moments on the pod as Stay Tuned hits our seven-year anniversary. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. By the way, folks, this Thursday evening, September 19th, I’ll be in a battleground state. I’ll be joining Suits actor Gina Torres at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia for a conversation about democracy and voter protection. You can join us in person or virtually, whatever works for you. Just go to cafe.com/philly for tickets. The link is also included in the show notes of this episode. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Come join us for this important conversation. Would love to see you.
Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes in a tweet or a posting on X from Shell who asks, “Why was this last would-be assassin, not charged for an attempted assassination, only felony firearms?” Well, that’s a good question. Bear in mind that the case is far, far from over. It’s just at the beginning stages of investigation. As Joyce Vance and I discussed in the CAFE Insider this past week, these charges are easily brought. They are one, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and the defendant here had previously been convicted of a felony and was clearly in possession of a firearm. So it’s a great strong demonstrably provable, easy charge to bring immediately. And the second relatedly is being in possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. I doubt that these will be all the charges that we ultimately see brought by the US attorney’s office in Florida.
I think there are some challenges to bringing a case potentially that relates directly to the assassination attempt. There’s a statute in the US code. It’s title XIII US Code Section 351, which relates to Congressional Cabinet and Supreme Court assassination and lists a variety of people who, if they’re victims of an attempted or actual assassination, this statute applies to them. Those people include members of Congress, the director or principal director of National Intelligence. Also, for purposes of this question, a major presidential or vice presidential candidate. An attempt on that person’s life leads to severe penalties under Section 351.
So one of the challenges would be, and a question that everyone has to ask in every case, not just a high profile, high stakes case, is would you be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to unanimous jury every element of the crime? So I think there’s an argument based on what we know so far, that Routh went there to that golf course, to that hole at the golf course with a loaded military style weapon for the purpose of shooting at Donald Trump.
But he never had the opportunity. He never got necessarily close. He never took aim at Donald Trump. Based on what we know, maybe you would be worried about a jury not finding every element has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So what I do think is the case is further investigation that shows the mental state of mind of the arrested defendant. Did he have documents in which he said he was intending to kill Donald Trump? I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that yet. Had he told other people that that was his purpose? Obviously he took substantial steps in furtherance of an assassination plot or attempt by coming there with ammunition, by staking out the position that he staked out at that hole on the golf course. I think it’s possible we get such a more serious charge added onto the gun charges, but I think it’s going to take a little time to develop that evidence about his actual intent and what they can prove to the jury.
This question comes in a tweet from Richard Robbins who writes, “In last week’s debate, VP Harris invited Americans to attend one of Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. Will you be following the Democratic nominee’s recommendation and going to the rally on Long Island on Wednesday? Should your listeners #askPreet?” Well, nice try. The short answer to your question is no, I will not be going. I have many, many better things to do.
You’ll recall that Vice President Harris said, I think in a rhetorically brilliant way that also resulted in quite an effective baiting of Donald Trump. He’s been talking about this line and this put down about the rallies uttered by Kamala Harris for days and days and days. Now it got under his skin, so it was a very effective debating technique. She said, just to refresh your recollection about Trump’s rallies …
Kamala Harris:
You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
Preet Bharara:
I think just on Tuesday of this week, Donald Trump went on at length in an interview saying, people do not leave his rallies early. And he talks about Hannibal Lecter and windmills and these other things because he’s a brilliant genius who knows how to connect the dots. So I think what Kamala Harris was suggesting, and I think it’s smart to suggest, is that people of good faith who are reasonable and thoughtful citizens, who are rational, if they have an opportunity to watch Donald Trump, whether in person or on YouTube or on Fox News or some other channel, engage in these unhinged rantings and ravings. They’ll realize that the better choice in this election season, whether you are a Republican, an independent or a Democrat, is clearly Kamala Harris.
People say, we should ignore Donald Trump, not give him airtime. I think Kamala Harris and her advisors are smarter on this issue like some other people have suggested. It is to her benefit electorally and strategically for Donald Trump to get airtime, because the more he speaks, the more he rants, the more he raves, the more he engages in fantastical thinking and fantastical speaking, the more people understand that he’s not the right person to be back in the Oval office.
This question comes in an email from Mabel who writes, “Hi Preet. What do you make of the charges brought by SDNY against P. Diddy?” My first reaction when I heard the news and then further when I saw the press conference given by Damien Williams, the current United States attorney in my old district, I was kind of struck by how surreal it all was. If you look at the charges and you listen to the explanation of the evidence that the government has gathered, various words come to mind, including disgusting, revolting, shocking.
If you look at the litany of charges, I don’t think I ever had a situation where this particular combination of alleged crime made its way into the first paragraph of an SDNY indictment. Let me just read it for you. Combs created a “criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in and attempted to engage in among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.” Arson?
We don’t learn a lot about that, but that particular combination of crimes in connection with a racketeering charge is extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented. Some of the details that the government talks about in the indictment and that Damien talked about in the press conference are almost hard to repeat on a family program like this podcast. Luckily, I never in my history as US attorney in seven and a half years had to go to a podium and a bank of cameras and talk about and explain what a freak-off is. So I think the idea of a freak-off is somewhat novel and unprecedented in the history of southern district indictments.
Let me just read from the indictment. Combs would “lure female victims into Combs’s orbit, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then used force, threats of force and coercion to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers that Combs referred to as among other things, freak-offs. Freak-offs were elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often electronically recorded.”
There is a recitation of enablers who helped John Combs engage in these activities. There’s a recitation of victims being plied with drugs. There’s a recitation of elaborate attempts to bribe people so they wouldn’t come forward and to obstruct justice in a number of instances. In an unfortunate detail that US attorney Damien Williams imparted to us during the press conference, during a search of the defendant’s residence, they uncovered 1,000 bottles of lubricant. All in all, it’s a sordid set of facts that I think will cause Sean Combs to be in very, very serious trouble. With respect to a question that will come to mind, even though it’s very early in the case, and all we have is the bare allegations of the indictment, how strong is the case?
Well, we have some clues that there were a lot of witnesses and apparently the government seems to have talked to a lot of the witnesses who even though they were intimidated in some cases and threatened in other cases, have come forward and told their stories to the government. More importantly, in terms of evidence in both the paragraph I just read and other paragraphs as well, Combs and others took care to electronically record on their devices some of the conduct and activities that took place.
So this will be a difficult jury to sit on and I do expect it’ll go to a jury trial at some point in the future. But the combination of sordid details they have, what was found during the searches, victim testimony, presumably corroborated by video and audio recordings, I think presents a pretty devastating set of circumstances for Sean Combs. As I’m recording this on September 18th, the magistrate judge in the case has already ruled against Sean Combs and has required him to be detained pending trial.
That decision is being appealed to the district court judge. By the time you listen to this podcast, that decision will have been made, and I think that at least in present circumstances, Combs is going to be detained even though he’s made through his lawyers a very robust offer of a massive amount of money to put on the line to assure his appearance and the safety of the community, I think to the tune of $50 million. The defense lawyers will also argue, and they have some force of argument in this, that Sean Combs has known about this investigation for a long period of time. He’s known about many of the allegations in part because someone who he used to have a relationship with has sued him. There are now multiple civil suits that are alleging some of the same things that the government alleges in this criminal indictment.
He claims through his lawyers that he was cooperating with the government. He came back into the jurisdiction for the purpose of self surrender in dealing with this arrest, all of which the lawyers are arguing and will continue to argue, I mean that he’s not a risk of flight. It’s a little bit harder to make the argument that he’s not a danger to the community, given that in addition to those other things I mentioned that were found at his residences, a number of firearms, dangerous firearms were also found, the record of obstruction, the allegations that he tried to tamper with witnesses is very powerful evidence in favor of a detention order. So he will try to put together a significant bail package. I think it will fail.
There’s a pretty good summary of what the appropriate initial reaction should be to this indictment from my colleague, CAFE contributor Elie Honig. You can read his piece at cafe.com.
I will be right back with my conversation with H.R. McMaster. Retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster shares his experiences as former president Donald Trump’s, National Security Advisor. General H.R. McMaster, welcome to the show.
H.R. McMaster:
Hey, Preet. It’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Preet Bharara:
Congratulations on the book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. If I could, I’m going to begin with a semi-frivolous question. I noticed when I joined this conversation, you were already online. As a matter of training and habit and necessity, are generals generally on time and punctual?
H.R. McMaster:
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s all about punctuality.
Preet Bharara:
It’s all about punctuality.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, if you’re going to start an attack, for example, Preet, you want to be on time because you don’t want to leave your buddies hangin’ on either side of you, so yeah.
Preet Bharara:
And that’s something that is within people’s control.
H.R. McMaster:
Right. One of our famous units in the army is the 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment. And they’re known as the Night Stalkers, but their motto is time on target plus or minus 30 seconds.
Preet Bharara:
Plus or minus 30 seconds.
H.R. McMaster:
Right.
Preet Bharara:
Well, so next, I’m going to ask you a basic question. We’re going to get into your book and about lots of things that you talk about there in the current state of affairs with the American Military and Foreign policy. So you served, as everyone I think knows as a nationalist security advisor to President Trump. Explain to folks why when we have a Secretary of State, we have a Secretary of Defense, we have intelligence agencies, enormous bureaucratic coverage of national security, why president needs a National Security Advisor in the White House.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, Preet, I mean the need for it was really discovered during World War II after the surprise of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. And the National Security Act in 1947 put into place this National Security Council, which then required a secretariat to be able to coordinate and integrate information analysis intelligence across the departments and agencies. And then the use of National Security Council evolved over time, depending on the president, how the president wanted to organize the National Security Council staff in the White House to provide that coordination and integration function.
And the National Security Advisor, that role emerged in the 1950s. And what’s important, I think to note about the National Security Advisor is the National Security Advisor is the only person who has … and the national security and the foreign policy establishment who has the president as his or her only client. And so the job is to staff the president to make sure the president’s prepared for any kind of engagements on national security or foreign policy to run the process, that process for coordination and integration, to communicate the president’s decisions to the relevant audiences, including our own government, to put those policies in place, to help provide unity of effort with other heads of state by coordinating across this club of National Security Advisors internationally. And then finally, you have to be a leader, right? You have to lead an organization, a National Security Council staff, and provide them with what we call in the Army, purpose, motivation, and direction.
Preet Bharara:
Is the National Security Advisor equal to or superior to or subordinate to other folks in the government like the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense? Because you tell an interesting story about an interaction you had with Mattis. How do you arrange those in order of rank if you can?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I don’t think rank is as important as your role and understanding one another’s role and how they should complement one another. So the National Security Advisor can be awarded by the President as cabinet rank or not. But really what matters is the function and the function that I just described. I think that some people in government want to adhere to a hierarchy in part because they want to protect their bureaucratic prerogatives.
And I write in the book about this tension between some cabinet officials who prioritize control, control over what they regarded as their prerogatives and collaboration, the kind of collaboration that is necessary to help the president determine his or her foreign policy agenda. So these are not unprecedented frictions. I’m a historian who studied national security decision making and policy making, wrote a book about Lyndon Johnson’s, Vietnam war decision making. And so that was a comfort to me. I knew that this tension was going to be there, but I was maybe a little bit overconfident in my ability to transcend those tensions that are typical really in any administration.
Preet Bharara:
As you write in the tensions were at their lowest ebb when Henry Kissinger occupied both position of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. Could that ever be repeated? Do you ever desire to be both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State?
H.R. McMaster:
I think it’s unmanageable. And the reason I think it’s unmanageable is because, again, the Secretary of State has two main responsibilities or constituents or clients. One is his or her own department, and the other is the president. I think you need someone in the White House who can help the president by providing best advice, best analysis from across all the departments and agencies, and then also who can provide the president with multiple options. And this is a theme in the book, Preet, is that I think that’s where you owe a president. Hey, because it’s the president who got elected. Nobody elects a National Security Advisor or for that matter, or Secretary of State or defense or head of an intelligence agency.
And so it has to be the President’s foreign policy. And this is the tension between what political scientists call the presidential model and the secretarial model. And again, this is not new. Remember, it was Alexander Haig who said, I want to be the vicar, is what he called himself the vicar of foreign policy.
Preet Bharara:
Right. Well, he also declared himself to be in charge at some point.
H.R. McMaster:
He did. And of course, in his defense, he was just trying to assure the country but it came across as a little bit too-
Preet Bharara:
Not reassuring.
H.R. McMaster:
A little bit too eager, a little bit too earnest.
Preet Bharara:
So in what ways, and you’re fairly critical and blunt about this, Secretary Tillerson and Matt is in particular, given what you just said about the roles of people who serve the president, who’s the one elected official that they were all supposed to be in service to. In what ways did they misserve the president and/or the country? Because those might be different things.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I respect both those men, and obviously they were acting based on how they define their duties and responsibilities. But what I write about in the book is how they began to see President Trump as a danger who had to be contained rather than a president to be given multiple options. So instead of being biased in favor of giving him you all broad range of perspectives and access to a broad range of analysis and multiple options, what they wanted to do was kind of develop the policy on their own because they thought that the president was a danger to American interest. And I write in the book-
Preet Bharara:
Give them fewer … So they thought they would limit the range of options given to the president because at the outer end of the range of options, they were worried he might pick the bad one. Is that it?
H.R. McMaster:
Yes. Or even information in the form of contingency planning for North Korea or for Iran, I think in part under their belief that President Trump might be prone to use force capriciously, which actually he’s not. For whatever flaws that Donald Trump has, that is not one of them.
Preet Bharara:
He didn’t use force capriciously or it was not his impulse to use force capriciously because I think the latter is not quite the case, is it?
H.R. McMaster:
No, I don’t think of any case where he used it, capriciously.
Preet Bharara:
No, no. Right. Because in various circumstances, as I understand the record, he was persuaded not to, or people didn’t follow up on the kinds of things. For example, various people have reported that he asked the question, which was not a directive, but a little bit more than a question as I understood it. Can we use the military with respect to protests in Washington? Is that not capricious use of military power?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, it depends on how you use force, right? I mean, how you use the military. Remember the LA riots, Preet? There are examples of the military should be used to protect American citizens beyond the capacity of law enforcement. The National Guard is typically the one who have that role. But the active military has been used in the past as you know, after Brown versus the Board of Education, for example, in portions of the South where the National Guard was nationalized. And then also where US active duty forces were used to ensure that black Americans weren’t attacked as they were integrated.
So the key is to framing of it. And the president’s rhetoric at the time didn’t communicate that the military would be used to protect peaceful protests, which had been infiltrated by people who were setting neighborhoods on fire, Preet. So they would’ve been used in places like Seattle, Seattle and Portland or in Washington DC.
Preet Bharara:
But do you believe there are reports that Trump suggested why can’t members of the military shoot protesters in the knee?
H.R. McMaster:
No, I wasn’t there for that. But I was there-
Preet Bharara:
If he had done that is that-
H.R. McMaster:
No, of course that’s not-
Preet Bharara:
[inaudible 00:22:29]
H.R. McMaster:
No. The military wouldn’t do that. That would be an illegal order. And so we have certainly the ethical code beyond the legal code that we live by in the military. And there’s no way that a member of the US military would shoot a US citizen in the knee who didn’t pose a lethal threat to him or somebody else. So that just wouldn’t happen. But I tell the story in a War With Ourselves, multiple stories about some that the president says at times outlandish things, right? And what I learned over time is that oftentimes he’s just thinking out loud. Now that can be dangerous being the president of the United States, obviously, right?
Preet Bharara:
Because people can take him seriously, not everyone is H.R. McMaster.
H.R. McMaster:
But I tell the story of, he did say multiple times, he’s talking about the fentanyl and the drug traffic across the southern border. And he would say something like, “Why don’t we just bomb them?” Meaning the narcotics labs or the trafficking network. And what he was saying, I think really was, “Hey, at the time it’s even more now, 60 million Americans are dying every year from fentanyl. What we’re doing is not working. We need to do something different.” So I took that as a charge to develop more options for him. And then Jared Kushner, others, there was Juan Cruz, our great team in the state department and our ambassador. They made some real progress with Mexico. Even while the president seemed to be obsessed with insulting the Mexican president, we got the Remain in Mexico provisions and really some significant measures put into place that helped improve border security and then stem the flow of illegal immigration across the border.
Preet Bharara:
Did some people not appreciate what you say you thought was the case that the president was just thinking aloud, and when he said outlandish things, given that he’s the president of the United States? How were people supposed to know what he meant and what he didn’t mean? What’s literal and what’s not?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, that’s right. I mean, that’s why much of what the president says is irresponsible, right? Because what the president says has a bigger effect than just thinking out loud in a room by himself. And then what I found is I was with the president every day, multiple times a day, and I could place what he said in context, when you’re a leader at a very senior level, and when many of your cabinet officials and others only interact with you occasionally, it’s much more important to be precise in communication, which the president’s not great at.
I tell the story in the book, Preet is like, hey, he’s disruptive. Obviously there’s a lot in Washington that needs to be disrupted, and that needed to be disrupted then. And my job was to help him disrupt what needed to be disrupted without allowing … helping Donald Trump not disrupt himself and become the antagonist in his own story, which is his tendency.
Preet Bharara:
But so I’m just trying to understand in the room how this works. So let’s say President Trump when he was in office suggests something outlandish. “Why don’t we nuke the hurricanes?” Is the proper response from people like you and cabinet secretaries and other staff to ignore him, to laugh politely, to give him different options? Or obviously you’re going to not say to check and figure out the feasibility of nuking a hurricane. How do people react in the room and what’s the right way to react when a sitting commander in chief, if he did say it, says something crazy like that?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I tell multiple stories about this in the book, Preet. I try to bring readers into the White House with me-
Preet Bharara:
Yes. Bring our listeners into the White House, sir.
H.R. McMaster:
… [inaudible 00:26:02] engagements. So it depends on the context and how outlandish the statement is. So for example, there are times when you do just laugh. You’re like, “Okay, come on. I mean, that’s not a serious idea.” And he’ll laugh along with you. But there are times when you say, “Okay. Hey, well, that’s something we could do, but let me bring you some options.” One of the things that I highlight in the book, Preet, how important it was with a president who is disruptive ,with the president who thinks differently, receives information conversationally, was before you ever talk about what to do about a challenge to national security or an opportunity to exploit, to try to get agreement on what he’s trying to achieve, what his goals and objectives are.
So I tell the story of the book about us coming together in these framing sessions with the cabinet to frame the complex challenges and bring to President Trump, “Okay, here’s how we see the challenge with China weaponizing its status mercantilist economic model against us. Here is our vital interest that are at stake. Here is our overarching goal and objectives. Do you agree with that, Mr. President?” “Yes.” And then when you start to talk about should we impose tariffs under Article 232 of the trade law, which has to do with national security or Article 301 of the trade law, which has to do with intellectual property theft, then you could say, “Okay, consider these action specific actions in light of our objectives and put together an overall, what we call integrated strategy to overcome obstacles to progress and take advantage of opportunities in this case to counter Chinese economic aggression.”
So I give many examples of this in the book, and what I’m hoping, Preet, is I mean, many of us have had difficult bosses. And it’s a method for of helping that boss make the best possible decisions.
Preet Bharara:
What was the attention level of President Trump when presented with all these bits of information and the foundation before you gave choices?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, Preet, what I read about is how it depends. It depends on how distracted he was at the time, and he was distracted by the Mueller investigation. What we know now are the unfounded charges of collusion between the campaign. And you were kind of on the receiving end of a lot of this, Preet. So you could feel free to jump in on this, the sense of beleaguer, man-
Preet Bharara:
We can have a debate on what was debunked and what wasn’t. But that’s for another time.
H.R. McMaster:
But I think, I don’t know, we think the Durham report, I’m just going what the DOJ said about it and not what’s out there on Twitter or whatever else.
Preet Bharara:
You’re saying he was distracted by these investigations?
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah, he was distracted by everything. Remember the Not My President Movement, Speaker Pelosi saying he’s not a legitimate president. And so he conflated a lot of questions that really should not have been conflated, right? Hey, did Russia attack our democratic processes and institutions until 2016? Hell, yes, is the answer to that.
The second question is, do they care who win our elections? I still, even with the latest DOJ revelations here and indictments, Preet, I don’t think they really care who wins our elections as long as large numbers of Americans doubt the legitimacy of the result. And then finally, did they sway the election? And so he saw the so-called Russia Gate as a threat to his legitimacy. And it did create the sense of beleaguerment on his part. And so that was distracting. So we’re talking about attention span and everything. It really depends on the venue, what his state of mind was.
And I write about in the book how we tried to craft the right venues as you would for any leader that were consistent with the nature of the decision to be made. Some of these decisions were a small group in the Oval office, but hey, President Trump a lot of times would find it difficult to resist his tendency to go back to a reality TV show host and perform for an audience. So bigger audiences typically weren’t good. When you go to the situation room, as you know, there’s a sense of gravitas or gravity associated with that venue or Camp David. So it really depends, Preet and I tell different stories about when he was distracted and we didn’t get things done because of that, or sometimes he was provoked.
I tell the story of a meeting that I missed because some people wanted me to miss it, and I was happy to miss it in the Pentagon where some of the people around the president were kind of stoking him about the stupid people who came before him and how our allies have been taking advantage of the largesse of American taxpayers. And so when he went into that meeting, people around him, these certainly Iago figures around him-
Preet Bharara:
Iago figures, yes.
H.R. McMaster:
Yes. Had him exercised. And that meeting was a disaster as a result.
Preet Bharara:
Isn’t it true that if you’re going to be a chief executive, whether it’s of a large corporation and certainly the chief executive of the most important and powerful country in the world, you need the ability to compartmentalize and maintain your temperament, whether there are distractions of a personal nature or professional nature going on, yet you have to be able to fight multiple wars on many fronts, domestically, politically, internationally. And what you’ve described is someone who is not capable of that. Is that something to be criticized or just accepted?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, he is capable at times, but he does not have, and I read about this in the afterword of the book, what the Stoic philosophers called discipline of will, which is what you’re describing and-
Preet Bharara:
Not a phrase, frequently applied to Donald Trump.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, discipline certainly. Right? So I use the writings of Epictetus and of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to sort of boil down the kind of modern day political science understanding of presidential character. I’ve been a student of this over many years and had the great fortune of getting to know Alexander George who was just a fantastic person and a great scholar of the presidency and of presidential character, and the role that personality plays in whether or not a president’s effective.
And so they come up with a whole bunch of different criteria for a president, including organizational leadership capability, certainly intellect and perception. But I found that all of the modern day of political science literature from Alexander George, from Fred Greenstein and others, really it fits in to stoic philosophy and the disciplines of perception, action and will. And what we’re discussing is the discipline of will to be able to transcend the noise, to focus on what’s important, to not get distracted. But I think it’s fair to say a press that was very hostile to him.
Preet Bharara:
Many presidents have had a hostile press.
H.R. McMaster:
No, you’re right.
Preet Bharara:
Not necessarily every day of their presidency, but talk to Bill Clinton and talk to George W. Bush, talk to some others. And you didn’t write a book about them, so we can’t compare them, at least as recently you haven’t-
H.R. McMaster:
No, but I do have a chapter called LBJ and DJT and I-
Preet Bharara:
You do.
H.R. McMaster:
And they were both very insecure in this way, and both of them had this sense of beleaguerment as a result of it.
Preet Bharara:
I’ll be right back with H.R. McMaster after this. I want to come back to insecurity in a second because that’s a prevailing theme of your book. But before we get there, I’m struck by the way you described the early presidential daily briefs in other meetings, which you describe as, I’m going to ask you to explain yourself, sir because I love this phrase, “as exercises in competitive sycophancy.” Who were the biggest sycophants? How were they sycophantic? And did you throw up in your mouth a little bit?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, as a military officer, we tend to view sycophancy as distasteful, right? And this is telling your boss what your boss wants to hear, extolling your boss’s wisdom, phrases like, “Wow, I wish I had thought of that. Your instincts are always right.” There were phrases like this, and it was really anyone who wanted to curry favor with the president and this is-
Preet Bharara:
It was cringe. Did you cringe at these moments-
H.R. McMaster:
Yes, of course.
Preet Bharara:
Or did you from time to … but as a smart and effective leader within the government, tell us the truth, did you throw out the occasional undeserved compliment yourself?
H.R. McMaster:
No, never. I couldn’t bring myself do it-
Preet Bharara:
That’s why you’re out of the job.
H.R. McMaster:
Hey, Preet. It’s one of the reasons of many probably why only lasted 13 months. I couldn’t do it. People were telling me to do it. I mean, I got coaching from the outside because some people who were close to Donald Trump, I mean they thought I was doing a good job for him. And they knew-
Preet Bharara:
You could have told him at one juncture, “Sir, your tie is the perfect length, maybe even a little longer would be great.” The General McMaster would not do that.
H.R. McMaster:
I couldn’t do it. I mean, I’ve never been good at currying favor with superiors.
Preet Bharara:
So you say, and you’ve suggested here just now, that you never really clicked with the president, which seems fair to me. And perhaps from my perspective, a point of pride other than Sycophancy, what’s the kind of person, what are the traits of the people who did click with Donald Trump and would click in a second term?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, some of them were people who I think … First of all, I forget what journalists said this Preet, but people who adore President Trump and are his most staunch supporters, they take him seriously, but not literally, right? And then people who detest Trump take him literally, but not seriously. So I think it’s important to take elected the president seriously. So people were affected. They took him seriously, but not always literally. They didn’t try to slow roll him or play power politics games by advancing their own agendas or not doing what the president said, but they understood that they needed to bring him options and help him make the best decision.
And they were effective. I would put Mike Pompeo in that category, for example. And so there were other people though, who were not effective because they regarded the president again as a danger that had to be contained. And what they tried to do, and they did oftentimes is slow roll his decisions. And Preet, in the book, hey, Trump wasn’t always wrong. In fact, he was really right about a lot. Like, hey, stop giving aid to the Pakistanis and don’t give them any more aid until they stopped supporting the terrorists who were killing our soldiers, committing mass murder against Afghans. That made sense.
But I think when you frame Trump as a danger, then you begin to really even slow roll the implementation of that kind of clear and easy guidance. It should be pretty easy to stop giving stuff to the Pakistanis, for example. So I give examples in the book where I think people were not effective because they were trying to control the danger of Donald Trump. The other thing, Preet, and I think you’d be sympathetic to this, is that, hey, nobody elected those guys and gals.
I mean that if you actually are obstructing the president’s decisions, you’re actually undermining the Constitution because the President is the one who’s elected by the American people. So I think that in any administration, I tell multiple stories about this, is that there are three types of people who serve in any White House.
The first type of person is there to serve the elected president, give that elected president options and best analysis, and let the president determine his or her own agenda. The second group of people, they’re there to advance their own agenda, and they don’t want to give multiple options because they want to manipulate decisions consistent with that agenda.
And then the third group of people define their role as saving the country and maybe the world from the president. And much of the tension that I described, much of the at war with ourselves that happens within the administration is based on how people understand their role and these three different categories, and how those three different base motivations created a great deal of friction.
Preet Bharara:
So former President Trump gets re-elected and is in the presidency again, how do you think the proportion of people in those three categories serving the president, having their own agenda and trying to save the country, how will the proportion of important advisors and cabinet secretaries within those three groups shift?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I think there’s going to be a lot less of the third group, right? Because I think what has happened-
Preet Bharara:
They won’t get picked.
H.R. McMaster:
They won’t get picked. And I think the president is really distrustful now of people who would come in with a kind of standard background. He wants more loyalists, I think. But I think there are still a lot of people who fit into that first category, still have a good relationship with him. And I’m thinking of some of the people, Republicans in the Senate, for example, who are-
Preet Bharara:
Romney?
H.R. McMaster:
No, he’s not in the Senate anymore.
Preet Bharara:
Mitch McConnell?
H.R. McMaster:
It wouldn’t be him. No, not him either, but I think if you want to stir up some names, I mean, Tom Cotton-
Preet Bharara:
Yeah, no, of course. Josh Hawley, Mike Lee?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, but hey, how about Bill Hagerty? How about Sullivan and energy? I think we should be happy. Wouldn’t you be happy if Ted Cruz was Attorney general? I mean, he-
Preet Bharara:
I would not.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, you just-
Preet Bharara:
I would like it better than Jeff Clark and a number of others.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, he gets the Constitution though, doesn’t he? I mean, I just think-
Preet Bharara:
Some of the time.
H.R. McMaster:
What I’m saying is I’m not as worried about confirmed position as maybe unconfirmed positions.
Preet Bharara:
Right. Well, because the Senate has some power.
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah. That’s true.
Preet Bharara:
Depending on how the Senate shakes out. But what kind of person given the history and given his skirmishes with people and the percentage of people who were either fired or who quit given they didn’t click with him, what kind of people are going to populate jobs like National Security Advisor, chief of staff, et cetera?
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah. So one of the themes in the book, Preet, is the rewards of service. And I tell the story about when I got the call quite unexpectedly to interview for the job, and I had lots of people calling me and saying, “Hey, Donald Trump is-
Preet Bharara:
Don’t do it, right?
H.R. McMaster:
Fill in the blank. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. And for me, I never considered not doing it. He was my seventh commander in chief since I took the oath of service on the plane at West Point at age 17. And so I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to do my best.” But I tell in the book, and I actually told the president this, I told Secretary Mattis, I said, “Hey, my intention is to retire from the Army when I’m finished with this job. I don’t want another job after this, and I will do the job until I’m used up. And when I’m used up, I am at peace with it.” And I got to work, Preet, with some fantastic people. I mean across the departments and agencies and on the NSC staff and members of the White House staff too.
And I consider it, even looking back on it, a great privilege to have done it. I told President Trump at the end of the book, he calls me and tells me he misses me, and I said, “Hey, thanks again for the opportunity. If I went back to February of 2017, I would do it again.”
Preet Bharara:
You would.
H.R. McMaster:
But yes, I would do it over again, but I wouldn’t do it again today. He and I are used up, I would never serve-
Preet Bharara:
But what would you do differently? Would you compliment his haircut?
H.R. McMaster:
No. I think the story in the book is that we were able to get a lot done, I think, despite the friction, I think in part because really, frankly, Preet, I didn’t give a about myself. I knew the job was bigger than me and one of my successor to succeed too. I tried my best to welcome Ambassador Bolton and [inaudible 00:42:34]-
Preet Bharara:
Wait a second, general. You said at some point in the book, and I was going to get to this, but now we’ll jump to it. You said you told Mattis, “I hope you get John Bolton because you deserve John Bolton.” Explain to us what that means and what your prior comment made in light of that statement in the book.
H.R. McMaster:
So part of the friction I had with Secretary Mattis and Tillerson in particular, and we had a great working relationship actually across the cabinet. We had a great working relationship with the deputies and the departments and agencies, but there was a lot of friction between Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, because I think they feared kind of an Imperial National Security Council staff. They had heard the stories from Bob Gates and maybe even George Shultz, who were mentors to both of them about an overbearing National Security Council staff that infringes on the prerogatives and responsibilities and authorities of the departments of agencies.
Hey, but I’ll tell you, Preet, we’re the opposite. I inventoried all of the authorities and decisions that were concentrated in the White House under the Obama administration and prepared memoranda for President Trump to devolve those back to the Department of Agencies. We amplified the voices of the cabinet secretaries and helped them provide the president with options and make some fundamental and important course corrections to previous unwise policy.
Preet Bharara:
But what did you mean by the deserving of John Bolton’s statement?
H.R. McMaster:
Because they were going to get a much more active National Security Advisor who was going to try to drive his own policy, and he had been-
Preet Bharara:
Who was not about process and coordination, but about being the boss.
H.R. McMaster:
I think the whole process and the collaborative process that we put in place, our team put in place when I was National Security Advisor, Ambassador Bolton, he dismantled the whole thing, and it was sort of a different model of National Security Advisor. I write about this when I first came in, and this was really part of the book that I really enjoyed writing, one of the more enjoyable parts of the book for me to write, because some of it created a lot of angst. But this was about my consultations with previous National Security Advisors.
I talked to every living one. What I got from those conversations is there are many different models out there, depending on really what the President wants, but also the personality of the National Security Advisor and the relationship between the National Security Advisor, the departments and agencies and the President. And so Ambassador Bolton, which was his prerogative, I guess, he had a much different idea about how he was going to discharge his duties. I mean, I would like to think that Secretary Mattis having experienced both, if A is McMaster and B is Bolton, he would’ve picked A in retrospect,
Preet Bharara:
I mean, it’s an interesting lineage starting with General Flynn then you then John Bolton-
H.R. McMaster:
The many, the many [inaudible 00:45:20]-
Preet Bharara:
They’re very different characters, those first three alone.
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah.
Preet Bharara:
There’s a review of your book that’s a positive review from the Guardian and says the following, “In a disturbing but intriguing read, he meaning you, portrays his former boss as unfit for office.” I don’t believe you used that phrase. Do you agree with that representation of your book that it portrays someone who’s unfit for office?
H.R. McMaster:
Okay. Hey, President Trump is flawed in significant ways. Of course, this is a question that’s always asked of former Trump officials, and I’ve never said President Trump is unfit. And a lot of people have criticized me for that. And hey, it’s their right.
Preet Bharara:
I’m just asking again. I’m just asking you.
H.R. McMaster:
No. And I just want to explain my rationale here. Preet, there are two things, right? I’m a military officer, first of all, and I don’t want to tell people how to vote because I think that the military is being pulled into partisan politics by both political parties in a way that’s dangerous to our professional military ethic. And the bold line that has to be in place between our active military or all of our military and partisan politics. And the second is, hey, I’m a historian. And what I wanted to do in the book, and I write this in the note to readers a few paragraphs up front, is like, hey, this is my take on my experience. It’s my take on President Trump, his character, the personalities and relationships that existed during that year, the policy adjustments he put into place, and the ones he kept and didn’t keep.
And then I want the reader to make his or her own conclusions from that. Everybody, these days, they want you in their corner, Preet. Are you in my corner or are you in the other corner? I’m not in anybody’s corner. And I want the people in both corners to read the book and come to their own conclusions. It seems like about 50% of Americans are about to vote for Donald Trump. I think that they could benefit from reading the book as much as anybody who dislikes Donald Trump. And this is why the book, it doesn’t fit into any of those categories.
And one of my concerns and my editor’s concern certainly is like everybody would hate it as a result. But I think kind of the opposite is the case, Preet. I think people are ready to get over it, right? I mean, the severe polarization and the vitriolic nature of the discourse. And so it’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Preet Bharara:
I totally get it. I’m going to draw a comparison between your book and something else, which I mean actually with great respect because of the person who wrote the other thing, and it’s the Mueller Report. The Mueller report, which you mentioned earlier, among other things and one of the reasons that infuriated people was it did not make a pronouncement notwithstanding a lot of evidence in a lot of different areas, some of which was lacking and some of which wasn’t. In the mind of the authors of the report, and in the mind of the investigators who did the work, did Donald Trump commit a crime? Sort of see for yourself when you do the reading, it’s a little bit like that.
So you can understand why some people are frustrated, especially when you say things like, and we mentioned this earlier as well, the consequences of Trump’s significant insecurity. You write in a couple of places, and this goes to fitness for office, that Trump’s insecurities and his desire for attention left him perpetually distracted and vulnerable to mainstream media, but more importantly, subject to manipulation. I had begun to see Trump as akin to Shakespeare’s Othello. His insecurity made him susceptible to manipulation. And in particular, you say, “Putin used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him.” Anybody who on multiple occasions is described by his former National Security Advisor, a very well-respected general like you, as capable of being manipulated by all sorts of people, not just the media, but also are adversary of Vladimir Putin. I’m going to make the case that you have made the case that he’s unfit for office. Is that fair?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, no. If you think he can’t learn from that, and maybe he can’t learn from that at age 70 or whatever-
Preet Bharara:
Do you think he learns new tricks?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I think everybody can learn, right? So my job was, is to try to arm him so that he couldn’t be manipulated by Putin. And I would say, “Mr. President, this guy is like the best liar, the best deceiver in the world.” And I would tell the story of how George W. Bush was manipulated. Remember the story that Putin told George W. Bush about the cross he was wearing around his neck from his grandmother and President Bush then looked into his soul and saw somebody who cared about his people. And then President Obama with the reset effort with Putin and so forth. So I was just trying to tell him, “Hey, don’t fall into that same trap.” But I do tell the story about I just left the job. And John Bolton went with him, remember for the trip to the UK, and then there was a NATO Summit, and then he went to meet Putin in Helsinki.
My wife Katie, heard me yelling at the television. She’s like, “What’s going on?” We were at Tahoe driving cross country because I had just left the job or moving out to California. And it was President Trump at the Helsinki conference. And so Preet, I almost didn’t write some of this in the book because I didn’t want, if he gets re-elected to provide people with a playbook. But I thought, you know what? Putin already knows how he tried to manipulate him and maybe hopefully people around him read the damn book and then advise him the way I was advising him.
And Putin is an operator. So I write the story about Trump’s vulnerability to it, but I also write about how Putin is an operator and tries to manipulate Trump and others. And of course, Putin saw me as a danger, and that’s why they mounted a massive effort to get me out of the job.
Preet Bharara:
People understand this is not your first book since leaving service for the President, and you write more, I think, bluntly and critically about all these things in the current book than you did in the last book.
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah.
Preet Bharara:
What’s different between then and now, and how much of it is January 6th?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, okay, so when I first left the job publishers, my agents, everybody wanted me to write this book right away while Trump was still in office. I thought, “Does America really need that right now?
Preet Bharara:
Yeah, we did.
H.R. McMaster:
[inaudible 00:51:27]
Preet Bharara:
There’s an argument that we did, General.
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah, I know it’s an ex post facto argument about January 6th and like, hey, I should have been … but what I wanted to do, I made a mission statement for myself, Preet, when I retired, after 34 years in the Army, to help Americans understand better the most significant challenges and opportunities we face internationally as a way to come together for meaningful, respectful discussions about how we work together to build a better future for generations to come. And I thought what America needed then was a book that described our most significant challenges. That’s the book Battlegrounds, which I think today is still quite relevant to all the challenges that I wrote about in that book and what we needed to do to protect against these growing dangers that we’re seeing with an axis of aggressors and so forth.
This book, I was going to write second because I assumed that Donald Trump would be off the political scene. He would either be finishing, because remember I wrote Battlegrounds that was published in 2020, right? So before the pandemic, before George Floyd’s murder, before obviously the election denial, before January 6th. So I thought he would be either on his way out after second term or he would be off the political scene. So it’s kind of coincidental that it comes out now. And again, my motivation was to tell the story, to allow Americans to make their own decisions, not to tell you or anybody else how to vote, because again, I didn’t think he would be a candidate this year when I started writing this book.
Preet Bharara:
You wrote in the book about January 6th, you said, “It will take a long-term effort to restore what Donald Trump, his enablers, and those who encouraged him, took from us that day.” What did they take from us?
H.R. McMaster:
They took from us are part of our reputation, our reputation as a democratic nation with strong democratic institutions and processes and American citizenry that even though we can be at other’s … not each other’s throats, but we can debate with one another, we can have different policy positions once the election is over, that we get behind the elected president. So that’s what was taken from us. Now, our democratic institutions, as we know held. So there’s reason also for renewing confidence in what our founders gave us through the separation of powers.
But President Trump, who was sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, abdicated that responsibility by encouraging an assault on the first branch of government. And I think that’s just a fact. And so I didn’t say incite for a reason, Preet. I’m not a lawyer, but he encouraged it for sure at a minimum. I think we should have all been outraged by that. I felt embarrassed by it. I thought, “Gosh, how does this look internationally where I’ve spent the bulk of my career as a abroad?”
And so it was heartbreaking to me to see it. And I think that he bears responsibility for it. Now, the way that each voter sees it. Does that disqualify him in your view? I think that’s each individual voter’s decision to make. But in the book, as you just noted, I don’t pull any punches on it, Preet. I describe it the way that I saw it at the time.
Preet Bharara:
You describe that as heartbreaking. Is it heartbreaking to you to hear about the ways in which Donald Trump apparently has described people in the military as either suckers and losers, or people who were captured like John McCain? You touch on it. Can you tell our audience how you feel about those things as a lifelong member, proud member of the US military?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, it was profoundly disappointing because what it does is, now, first of all, I never heard him say like the loser comment. This has, I think, been attributed to John Kelly. Has he been on the record saying that he heard that? I’m not sure. I don’t know but I think-
Preet Bharara:
Do you doubt he said it or do you think it’s possibly he said it or he definitely said it?
H.R. McMaster:
I mean, I can’t imagine he said it. I mean, I hope he didn’t say it, dammit. I mean, I never heard him say that. Of course, I did hear him disparage John McCain’s service and his extraordinary courage and resilience as a-
Preet Bharara:
Did you ever hear him in word or deed evince the kind of respect and understanding for sacrifice by our military that you would want him to exhibit?
H.R. McMaster:
Yes, I have. But I think it was a fundamental misunderstanding. He doesn’t really get why our servicemen and women, our warriors serve. And I tried to expose him to that, for him to understand it. And I tell a story in the book about, as we were considering what to do about the South Asia strategy and the war in Afghanistan, where I asked the chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, General Dunford, he’s a fantastic professional in the model of George Marshall. I said, “Hey, can you find some soldiers and airmen with multiple experiences in Afghanistan to come meet with the president for lunch?” So he meets them for lunch, and he asks them, “Hey, do you want to go back to Afghanistan?” And they all said, “Yes, Mr. President. We want to go back.” And he said, “Why would you go back?” And they said, “Well, because these are the enemies of all civilized peoples and we are helping keep our own country safe and we don’t want our children to have to go back.”
And what that gave him, I would hope, was a glimpse of the warrior ethos and the sense of honor, the covenant that binds our warriors to those in whose name we fight and serve. And also kind of the sense of honor, Preet, that binds them to one another, not wanting to let each other down and to accomplish the mission. So I don’t think … He didn’t get it.
Preet Bharara:
But what you’re saying is just to put those words together based on what you said is the President doesn’t get or appreciate or understand honor. He doesn’t even have to quote from him famously from the debate concepts of honor.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I think a lot of Americans struggle with that these days, and I’m really concerned about it. Remember the-
Preet Bharara:
Yeah, but he’s the commander in chief. He’s not a lot of Americans-
H.R. McMaster:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:57:32] but you know-
Preet Bharara:
He was the commander in chief. He wants to be the commander in chief again, so to say. A lot of Americans have this issue. A lot of Americans commit homicide. A lot of Americans do a lot of things.
H.R. McMaster:
Preet, I think popular culture these days, cheapens and coarsens service in the military and the warrior ethos. And the reason is part of it is fewer and fewer Americans are serving, right? It’s not like it used to be where every family knew somebody in the service. And then I think Hollywood and even commercials for these well-meaning charities, they portray veterans as traumatized, fragile human beings. And you know what-
Preet Bharara:
Yeah, but President Trump is supposed to be above that. He’s not supposed to be-
H.R. McMaster:
Well, so is President Biden, and this is not an equivalent thing, but-
Preet Bharara:
Do you think Joe Biden doesn’t appreciate honor and service and loss of the military?
H.R. McMaster:
I don’t think he fully gets it. And this is the example I would give you on the President Trump’s side is going to Area 60 where our most recent war dead are laid to rest. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our name in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. And the pose like President Trump did with the thumbs up, that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of their sacrifice. But you remember President Biden in 2021 in February or March or April, I can’t remember, went to that same area, Area 60, to announce the complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. And he did so I think believing that that would be received well by those who fought in that war. And hey, the opposite is the case.
So I think this is a bigger problem. I wrote an essay about this years ago called Preserving the Warrior Ethos. And I think that President Trump does not understand service really. And I’ve read about that in the book. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it. But I think there are others who also misunderstand-
Preet Bharara:
Look, I don’t want to have an argument about the difference between appreciation for service between Donald Trump whose presumably his alleged and fake bone spurs kept him out of service. And Joe Biden whose son did serve because it’s not useful. And I have some other things to get to. So Afghanistan on the issue of whether or not there should have been a withdrawal, large consensus about that, including on the part of Donald Trump. It seems to me that the legitimate criticism, and I engaged in it, and I know you have engaged in it, was the method of withdrawal and the execution with the withdrawal. What do you think were the principle mistakes made about the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, it really begins in February or maybe no later in 2019 when he sends this Envoy Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to negotiate with those jackasses, the Taliban in Qatar, the people who are living in five-star hotels while they’re raising money so they can continue to fund an organization that’s attacking Americans, but also committing mass murder in Afghanistan and is part of a terrorist ecosystem on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, an organization that is funded by Gulf donors and trained and equipped by Pakistan’s ISI, a transnational terrorist organization.
The first, bad, bad decision, which resurrected the flawed approach of the Obama administration is to negotiate with the Taliban without the Afghan government present. I mean, that affected the legitimacy of the Afghan government. And then how does it work to give them a timeline for our withdrawal and then try to negotiate a favorable settlement? We reduced our support for the Afghan Security forces at the time. We reduced the active targeting of the Taliban and our intelligence support and our air support, our logistics support.
And these were policies and an approach that was continued by the Biden administration. I’m telling you, Preet, if we were going to leave, why the hell didn’t we just leave? Even the Obama administration, when the Obama administration left Iraq in December, 2010, only to have to return there after the rise of ISIS. But when they left in 2010, they didn’t negotiate with al-Qaeda in Iraq on the way out. So I just think that the whole approach was flawed and responsibility for the debacle in Afghanistan is shared across the Trump and Biden administrations.
Preet Bharara:
I think that’s fair. What should be happening in Gaza and in Israel?
H.R. McMaster:
Well, here’s what I think is necessary to get back a path toward a temporary peace and then try to re-envision a path toward enduring peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the complete destruction of Hamas. And I know this is not a popular thing to say given the amount of civilian casualties we’ve seen-
Preet Bharara:
Right because You have to give an answer that also describes at what cost.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, here’s the thing is, do you want a better life for the Palestinians? If the answer is yes, you have to also buy in to the destruction of Hamas as a precondition because it’s Hamas who has diverted billions and billions of dollars away from the Palestinian people and into its terrorist infrastructure. While its leaders have enriched themselves living in big villas on the Mediterranean coast, while the vast majority of the population is destitute, they committed the most heinous attacks you can imagine. Of course on October 7th of last year, knowing that the Palestinian population would suffer as a result of what Israel had to do to defend itself against those attacks and ensure that they wouldn’t happen again. These are people who the leadership of Hamas, as soon as in areas declared safe, guess who moves into that area? Hamas leadership. They move into the schools. They move into the UN facilities as we’ve seen recently.
They move into the hospitals and they use the population as human shields. How much of those tunnels where they have murdered in cold blood hostages do they make available to the civilian population for civil defense? The answer is none of it. And so if you believe that there has to emerge in Gaza a political order that is an alternative to Hamas, then you have to be for Hamas destruction because hey, Preet, who’s going to be the mayor of Gaza? As soon as you say, “Oh, I will be,” you’re going to get a bullet in the head from Hamas.
And so I really think that this offensive has to continue, albeit with the use of firepower, with a higher degree of discrimination. And that’s what we ought to be urging. But we should not be saying a ceasefire is an end in of itself. The end actually is getting the hostages back by whatever way you can. And the end must be, in my view, the destruction of Hamas.
Preet Bharara:
A higher degree of discrimination, that answer is doing quite a bit of work.
H.R. McMaster:
Well, I’ll tell you, as somebody who’s led forces into dense urban terrain against a terrorist defending enemy, it’s super hard. It’s harder there than it was for me. We actually, in the city of Tal Afar in 2005 during Operation Restoring rights, and there’s an essay about this in the New Yorker by George Packer, we evacuated the civilian population from this dense urban. It’s not an option here, right?
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. But if you were the head of the operation on the part of Israel, you were the commanding general. Would you be proud of the current record?
H.R. McMaster:
No. I mean, I don’t think anybody can be proud of any civilian deaths ever. You never want to be proud. You can’t be proud of that. Now, the question is, and I’m not there on the ground, other people have been there on the ground. I’ve not visited there directly. I want to do that. But I think that they have put into place efforts to mitigate it. Have they been affected? Hell no. They haven’t been effective. But who’s to blame for that? Certainly if the IDF uses firepower with … This goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas, Preet, right? This is not a new development in terms of Jews and Bellow theory in terms of proportionality and discrimination and so forth.
But I think you got to blame Hamas too, right? I mean, I think that what kills me, Preet, is when I see people who are these protests bridge over into pro Hamas. And it is crazy. I mean, these people are those who have victimized the Palestinians. And if you think about kind of the attack that Israel’s come under, I’ll tell you, first of all, what kills me, Preet is people are, they protest like pro-Hamas, and then say, “I’m for a two-state solution.” Hey, well, Hamas’ charter is that they want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. It doesn’t sound to me like they’re signing up for a two-state solution.
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. There’s some inconsistency there.
H.R. McMaster:
I think it’s quite as possible, but I don’t hear this in this crazy polarized world that we’re in to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Hamas, right? That’s what I think. If you are pro-Palestinian, you should have to be anti-Hamas. And by the way, anti-Iran for their use of these proxies, and really a strategy, Preet, Iran’s strategy is to expend every Palestinian life, every Arab life, if that’s what it takes to push us out of the region as the first step in destroying Israel. I mean, they have effectively activated what they call the Ring of Fire strategy around Israel.
Preet Bharara:
I know you got to go in a second, but I want to present to you a criticism that I’ve heard by some people on the right and ask if you have a reaction to it. There are people who have said that the US military is too woke to be effective. Is our US military woke? And if so, what does that mean?
H.R. McMaster:
Our military’s not woke. It’s not woke, and it’s not extremist either.
Preet Bharara:
Thank you.
H.R. McMaster:
And I’ll tell you, Preet, I mean there are people on both sides of the political spectrum who are trying to politicize the military. There are some people, I got to say, Preet, in the Biden administration, political appointees who are pushing this kind of post-colonial, post-modernist critical theory agenda, the valorization of a victimhood and categorizing people into oppressor and oppressed and so forth. But it’s not gotten traction in the military. The military’s not woke. The military’s not extremist.
We need our best young men and women to serve in our armed forces. And so what I try to highlight in the book, it’s kind of on a sub-theme in the book, are the tremendous rewards of service in our military, but in government as well. We need our best Americans to reject this polarization that we see in our polity and restore confidence in our common identity as Americans.
Preet Bharara:
And in the military, dare you say it, is diversity a good thing?
H.R. McMaster:
Yes. But there are people who are pushing kind of the DEI orthodoxy, Preet, like equality of outcome. No, we don’t judge.
Preet Bharara:
I’m not saying that.
H.R. McMaster:
No, but I know you’re not-
Preet Bharara:
It is worthwhile to have an excellent military that has black and brown people and white people.
H.R. McMaster:
Preet, we do have diversity in our military unlike-
Preet Bharara:
I’m just saying that’s a good thing, right?
H.R. McMaster:
It’s a good thing. But here’s the critical thing. What have our students learned in our most elite campuses? We tell them that they should judge the person next to them based on their identity category. That not only makes no sense to me, Preet, it’s destructive to our warrior ethos in our military because you know what? We judge the soldier next to us by? Their toughness, their sense of honor, their willingness to sacrifice for one another and the mission, their courage. That’s what we care about in the military. We don’t give a damn what your skin pigmentation is, what your sexual orientation. I mean, come on.
So I just think that if something doesn’t make sense to you as a young American in particular, don’t buy into it. And I think what we’ve seen destroy the academy, Preet, is kind of this orthodoxy of, I would call it self-loathing in our humanities departments. I think we teach the new left interpretation of history, teach post-modernist, a post-colonial theories, but don’t make that an orthodoxy. Also expose students to alternative interpretations that are more fact-based, I would say as an American historian.
Preet Bharara:
We’ll end there with General H.R. McMaster’s oral application to be the president of a major university.
H.R. McMaster:
Who would want that job, Preet? Like hats off.
Preet Bharara:
I think you should send that out, general and see who bites. It’s been a great privilege to have you on the show. Congratulations again on the book At War with Ourselves: My tour of Duty in the Trump White House. Thank you, sir.
H.R. McMaster:
Preet, thank you. It’s been a privilege.
Preet Bharara:
In this week’s bonus for insiders, I answer listener questions about Trump’s sentencing and the decision to try Georgia’s school shooter as an adult. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.
end the show this week, I want to mark a significant milestone in the history of this podcast. Friday, September 20th will be the seventh anniversary of the first episode of Stay Tuned with Preet. I will confess, at the time, I didn’t know if anyone would listen to this former federal prosecutor, but I hoped you would, and here we are. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been hosting Stay Tuned for this long.
In that time, a lot has happened. We’ve watched our country and the world face stunning challenges, political shifts, a global pandemic, rising movements for justice. But through it all, there were moments of resilience, hope, and progress that kept us feeling optimistic about the future. So as we look back on seven lucky years of meaningful conversations, I’d like to revisit some of the moments that have stayed with me and maybe stayed with you too.
The journey began with the very first piece of audio I ever published seven years ago, which was a Stay Tuned trailer that went like this. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Preet Bharara, and I’m the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. That was me a few months ago at a press conference when I still had the best job I’ll ever have.
I oversaw prosecutions against every type of criminal you can imagine, mobsters murderers and corrupt politicians. On March 11th of this year, though, I lost that job. Actually, that’s a euphemism. I was fired by President Donald Trump himself. Losing that job was tough, but it opened the door to something new, this podcast, among other things. Soon after launching Stay Tuned Anne Milgram, who would later become my co-host on CAFE Insider, joined me to discuss some of the most pressing legal issues of the day, including Robert Mueller’s investigation and Trump’s first impeachment.
Anne Milgram:
The conversation now has gotten so much deeper and the evidence has gotten so much stronger about-
Preet Bharara:
There’s a lot of stuff.
Anne Milgram:
There’s a lot there. There’s an incredible amount of evidence that the president corruptly used his influence.
Preet Bharara:
But just months after that first impeachment, a new crisis was upon us. We started hearing about COVID-19, and soon we were all social distancing and working from home. And in the midst of a global pandemic, our country held one of the most tense presidential elections in modern history. After Biden’s victory, the tension boiled over on January 6th as supporters of then President Trump sought to overturn the election results. We invited former Senator Claire McCaskill on the show to discuss.
Claire McCaskill:
Trump understood grievance better than most American politicians. He has no empathy, but he understands grievance, and he tapped into that grievance, and he wrote it.
Preet Bharara:
During Biden’s presidency, we’ve covered major events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the October 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war, and of course, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V. Wade. I remember discussing that monumental ruling with legal scholar, Jeannie Suk Gersen.
Jeannie Suk Gersen:
I actually didn’t believe that Roe would be overturned until the oral argument at the Supreme Court on-
Preet Bharara:
In this case.
Jeannie Suk Gersen:
In this case.
Preet Bharara:
Wow. And just when we thought we’d seen it all, Donald Trump was indicted in four different criminal cases and eventually convicted in the falsifying business records case in Manhattan. For that, I had Elie Honig, Joyce Vance and Mimi Rocah on to discuss. Were you surprised at all about the speed of the conviction?
Mimi Rocah:
No, I wasn’t surprised by the speed. The counts were all very related.
Preet Bharara:
Then the political landscape took another unexpected turn. Biden changed his mind about running for reelection, and Kamala Harris became the surprise nominee for the Democratic ticket. As it turns out, no one was more surprised than her husband Doug Emhoff, as he told me in a recent interview.
Doug Emhoff:
And my phone was literally like self-immolated. You could feel the smoke coming out of that phone. And of course, it was a series of messages. “Call Kamala. Call Kamala.” And I got them from the kids. So I finally call and she was, “Where the … were you?”
Preet Bharara:
You can say it. These are just a few of the memorable moments from the last seven years. I’ve interviewed well over 300 guests and chatted with many amazing people. I’ve also worked with the best producers in the business. We’ve won awards. Vox Media acquired the company that makes the show. But the thing that’s meant the most to me is all of you, our listeners, and hearing what Stay Tuned has meant to you.
Listener 1:
Hey, Preet. You have carried me through some really dark days, my friend, and I’m betting that a bunch of your listeners feel the same way.
Listener 2:
As a retired high school journalism teacher, I’m appreciative of Preet’s meticulous preparation for each interview.
Listener 3:
I’m sure you have a great legal mind, and I really enjoy the calmness and humor that you bring to your analysis, but it’s your heart that I treasure the most.
Listener 4:
I’m calling to say a heartfelt thank you. P.S., I’m also a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, my friend. And when this Coronavirus mess is all cleaned up, I want to go to an East Street band show with you, and the drinks are on me because tramps like us, Preet, baby, we’re born to run.
Preet Bharara:
Well, I guess we were. We’ve come a long way together over these last seven years, but there is still so much more to talk about, so many more brilliant people to talk to, complex problems to solve, different perspectives to explore and legal questions to ponder. Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of our community, and as always, Stay Tuned.
Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, General H.R. McMaster. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
The Executive Producer is Tamara Sepper. The Technical Director is David Tatasciore. The Deputy Editor is Celine Rohr. The Editorial Producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.
