Trump seems ready to fire national security adviser
WASHINGTON — Hard on the heels of firing his secretary of state, President Trump is preparing another shakeup, moving toward replacing his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.
The three-star Army general has been widely seen as a calming force in a chaotic West Wing, but never clicked with the commander in chief. A decision to replace him has long been rumored and now seems increasingly imminent.
How long McMaster might stay at the White House remains unclear. Two White House officials said Trump might want to keep McMaster in the job until after a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which is planned for May.
McMaster has told aides he would not return to the military, even if offered a fourth star. He plans to stay in the job as long as the president wants him to serve, he has said.
A move to replace McMaster would come as the Trump administration faces weighty decisions on a range of global issues, including whether to abandon the multinational nuclear deal with Iran and how to confront North Korea over its nuclear missile program.
While Trump liked to boast about “my generals” — a group that included White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and McMaster — the president did not develop a rapport with the national security adviser by many insiders’ accounts.
In Oval Office meetings, McMaster was said to bore and irritate Trump by meticulously laying out the pros and cons on major policy questions.
Over time, however, Trump also developed a grudging respect for McMaster, seeing him as an honest broker between warring factions in the Cabinet, and one of the few advisers willing to tell him things he didn’t want to hear, according to two White House officials who described the men’s relationship on grounds of anonymity.
Yet that candor, and McMaster’s occasional slow-walking of Trump orders that the national security team thought ill-advised, made for some tense moments that provoked Trump to explode at McMaster.