Coleman Hughes (4:54)

Yeah. So the second fashionable argument, it's long been a fashionable argument, but I've seen it more and more and more on the right, whereas it used to be relegated to the far left, is that we have a military industrial complex and you know, more than just being a marginal influence on decision making, the idea is that our military decision makers, the President's military advisors, the people that ultimately choose and influence decisions on whether to go to the, whether to go to war, whether to sell weapons, are financially compromised by their own ties to the weapon manufacturing industry. This is a very popular idea, you know, around on podcasts and kitchen tables all, all around the country. So what do you make of that charge?

H.R. McMaster (5:48)

Well, you know, Coleman, I just think it, it's not borne out by the facts. Right. I mean, you know, this became quite popular, this, the military industrial complex, thinking of as, as a driver of foreign policy during the Vietnam War. Right. The term was first used by, by Dwight Eisenhower in his, in his farewell address. And what he was concerned about was, you know, the lobbying in Washington by big defense companies and the degree to which that, you know, the complex that he had in mind was, was really, you know, people in government, members of Congress whose districts get, you know, the benefit of jobs and government, you know, contracts and the defense industry. You could add a fourth, like some think tanks and so forth, you know, that, that do work for, you know, big defense companies and produce studies that say, man, you really need more of this. You know, that's, that's all a concern, right? That's a concern that maybe those aren't defense dollars well spent. But it's quite a leap then to say decisions that involve life and death, right. War and peace are driven by this complex. When I did my research, the first book I wrote, Coleman, was about how and why Vietnam became an American war. I mean, I was dead in all those archives, you know, and newly declassified documents and tapes of telephone conversations and meetings, you know, and the evidence just isn't there. Right. And, and, and I, as much as my experience in government, as well as a military officer and, and certainly as national security advisor. So hey, I would just say, hey, show me the evidence that, that, that, that exists. It doesn't exist. It's I think more of a holdover as you, as you allude to of kind of the new left interpretation of history, an anti capitalist kind of interpretation of history. But you know, there has to be a recognition culminate. You know, these companies, right, U.S. companies, they're not, you know, they're not philanthropic organizations, right. They're public companies that have a responsibility to their shareholders. So they do seek profits. Right. They do seek to be profitable. But, but there's, there's, there's a lot of room for reform. And I think when you just throw the term around, okay, the military industrial complex is why we are in Afghanistan really. I mean, I think we were in Afghanistan probably because of the largest mass murder, terrorist attack in history that occurred on September 11, 2001. So it's just not borne out by the facts. Iraq is often used to war in Iraq, which I think a lot of people agree was a mistake, but it wasn't driven by, you know, a profit motive.

Coleman Hughes (8:16)

Yeah. So the third pillar that's, that's popular to talk about largely because Trump has popularized it, is the so called deep state. And you know, the idea is that there's these sort of permanent unelected bureaucrats in Washington that are actually driving the policy. And the President is unable to execute on certain things because he's going to be opposed at every level by these sort of permanent bureaucrats. And to give this point of view its due, in reading your book and reading Jared Kushner's book, John Bolton's book, you do actually see that there are what I would say are obstructionist elements in the bureaucracy of, of the Pentagon, for instance, or, or the, the, or the State Department, where the President wants to do a. And can't just execute because, you know, people are slow rolling the policy and, and so forth. So what do you make of the criticism that there is a deep state?

H.R. McMaster (9:25)

Hey, Coleman. There kind of is, you know, but, but it's not like, it's not, it's not in the, you know, kind of the, the far, you know, you know, the far right or far left conspiracy theory way. Right. I mean, it's not, you know, or, you know, gosh, you know, they don't run the, the world or the deep state. They can't completely obstruct the, you know, President's directives. But there is, I would call it bureaucratic inertia. Right. Bureaucratic resistance. People who think they know better and who don't understand their role. Right. Cohen? I, you know what? I think Epictetus was quite wise when he said this is what is most important to play. Well, the role assigned you. And I think in Washington, in any administration, there are kind of three groups of people. I write about this in the book. There are people who are there because they understand their role. I had been in the army for 33 years when I took over as National Security Advisor. Donald Trump was my seventh commander in chief since I took the oath of service on the plane at west point at age 17 under Jimmy Carter. You know, so, I mean, I knew my job was not to make policy. Nobody elects generals. You know, my job was to give the president options, give the president best advice, and then the president, the guy who got elected, you know, he makes the decisions. But then there's a second group of people. They're not there to give the president options. They're there to manipulate decisions consistent with their agenda, something they bring into the government because they think they're the smartest person or the wisest person, or they've got the solution to a problem. And then kind of the third group of people, this was maybe overrepresented in the Trump one administration, see the president as an emergency, right. Or a danger to be contained, and they see it as their job to protect the country, maybe the world from the president. The problem with that second and third group of people is, hey, nobody elected you. So if you believe that the radical idea of our nation is that sovereignty lies with the people, you're actually undermining the Constitution of the United States. So I think it all comes down to, hey, what is your role? And then, you know, President Trump in this, you know, this next, this next round here, he's gonna come in with an agenda of, you know, of weakening this bureaucratic resistance. I just hope the way he does it is reasoned and helps restore kind of an understanding of the role and he doesn't overcorrect in a way that further politicizes some of these institutions. So it remains to be seen, but there is a need for reform in this area. I'll just give you one example, Coleman. When we were putting into place what I believe was the most significant shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, which was the shift from the strategy of, of, of, you know, of cooperation and engagement with China to one of competition, we met a lot of resistance, you know, in the, in the State Department, in the Defense Department, you know, and, and it was frustrating. It frustrated the president, you know, who didn't really understand what people did in government. So he blamed me, which is like one of the services I provided, you know, going back to the Secretary of State, Defense. Hey, the president said to Deuce, you were in the room, you know, you had your say. You kind of agreed. Why is your, why is your department not implementing the president's decisions?

Coleman Hughes (12:51)

Yeah, I mean, I think somewhere in your book, I think, you know, you describe the role of the national security advisor, in many cases, to actually enforce the decisions of the president. And implied in that is that there is often tons of resistance, that, that it doesn't just happen automatically. Right.

H.R. McMaster (13:10)

You know, and, like, you had no authority to call me, like, and you shouldn't really. Right. I mean, you're not in the chain of command, you know.

Coleman Hughes (13:16)

Right.

H.R. McMaster (13:17)

So you, so you, Nobody should answer to me. So I, I, I kind of described it as coordinating and integrating efforts across the departments and agencies and assisting the president, you know, but through the sensible implementation of his policy decisions, through that coordination function. Right. But I'll tell you, at times, you know, and I write about this a little bit in the book, there's some that is not in the book too, you know, but, but I, I, I, you know, I had to go to formal mechanisms to say, to write to, you know, to, to cabinet officials. The President told you to do X, you're doing Y. And I'm sure he expects you to change course, you know, immediately. And then, and because I, I thought, hey, if they're not going to respond to my phone calls, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to shift, you know, what they're doing, you know, you know, let me put it in writing. And then of course, finally, that broke through a lot of the, the inertia. And yet, of course there's this tension as well. Like, I didn't want to like, run to the President, you know, hey, these guys aren't doing what you told them to do, right. I don't think that would be helpful because, you know, President Trump kind of likes interpersonal conflict and man, there was enough of that in there in the Trump White House already and in the administration already. So I thought, hey, let's work together. And I really had confidence, probably overconfidence Coleman, in my ability to transcend some of the friction associated with the way others were defining their roles. And then also kind of, you know, some people are, they kind of emphasize control over collaboration and we've all met them right, in, in our different various walks of life. You know, some people just aren't collaborative. They're not team players, you know. Yeah. So, hey, but it's all, that's what makes life interesting, right? The personalities and relationships. And, and you know, I wrote about that on how why Vietnam became an American war. And it was interesting, you know, to, to experience it, you know, myself as a national security advisor, having criticized the national security decision making process under Lyndon Johnson.

Coleman Hughes (15:11)

From a historian's perspective, I'm curious, did your experience being National Security advisor at all make you revise your conclusions or like, did it make you more or less judgmental of the Vietnam War decision making?

H.R. McMaster (15:25)

You know, it's kind of the same. You know, honestly, I, I really wouldn't have changed anything. I wrote in, in the Dereliction of Duty book. I mean, I, I really, you know, I felt as if I, I learned from dereliction duty. I, I resolved to make, you know, new mistakes, not the old ones that I criticized then National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy for, for making. And, and those were really five, those were five lessons. My first day on the job, right, I walk in to the West Wing of the White House and I go into my office and it kind of hits you like, wow, now I'm in charge of the, of the process I criticize from the perspective of a historian. So I, you know, I'm kind of an outlook guy. I took out like a, I took out a legal pad and I jotted down what I thought were the top lessons of, from how and why Vietnam became an American war. And, and the first of these was take more time thinking about the nature of the problem, you know, and, and we put into place these framing sessions that applied design thinking to the challenges we were facing. The second was, you know, this sounds kind of silly or obvious, you know, but how about like having a goal and objective, you know, otherwise you're in the Alice in Wonderland situation where any path will get you there. But with George Bunny, he had argued, hey, it's better not to have an objective in Vietnam because that will, quote, give the President more flexibility in the domestic political arena.

Coleman Hughes (16:43)

Right.

H.R. McMaster (16:44)

The third key lesson was make assumptions that underpin your planning or your policy development explicit, because oftentimes the worst policies are underpinned by fundamentally flawed implicit assumptions that never get challenged because they're implicit. And then fourth, super important, always give the President multiple options. During the meet up the Vietnam War, President Johnson's advisors determined what he wanted to hear and gave him the option that he wanted. You know, and of course, some of them argued, which was strange to me, you know, the best way for them to preserve their influence with the President was to tell the President what he wanted to hear, which of course begs the question, what the heck good is your influence anyway? And then finally, you know, to try to insulate the process from partisan political considerations, especially those that involve, you know, war and peace, you know, national security. Understanding that people will have the President's year as part of decision making who take those partisan considerations to him, but it shouldn't infect the development of options for the President. So I think we did that successfully. I think running that process, dealing with the friction kind of chewed me up in the process, but I was at peace with that. And the story in the book is really, you know, the story of trying to overcome that friction, overcome those obstacles, and help President Trump in that first year of his presidency put into place some long overdue and major correctives to unwise previous policies.

Coleman Hughes (18:16)

Yeah. Okay, so I want to talk about Trump's strengths and weaknesses. This is a quote I'm pulling from one of your friends that you wrote in the book who said, I wish that more Americans could see beyond their silos of cable news and vitriolic partisanship to understand more fully the good as well as the Bad and the ugly of the Trump administration. Right. Oh, sorry. No, that's actually your. That's your quote.

H.R. McMaster (18:45)

Right.

Coleman Hughes (18:46)

And your friend's quote that. That struck me was, some people hate Trump so much that they want him to fail, but he's the President of the United States. We can't afford for him to fail.

H.R. McMaster (18:56)

Right.

Coleman Hughes (18:56)

That seems so clearly to me, the right attitude. Whether or not you voted for Trump, whether you think he's horrible, whether you think he's our Lord and Savior, we have to want him to succeed, and so we have to understand his strengths and weaknesses, and so to mitigate the latter and encourage the former. So what do you see as Trump's personality strengths relative to other presidents?

H.R. McMaster (19:27)

Well, you know, first of all, you know, he's a disruptor. You know, he's reflexively contrary. And I think. I mean, I think the vast majority of Americans would agree there's a heck of a lot in Washington that needs to be disrupted. So he challenges that conventional wisdom and challenges assumptions by the questions he asks. Sometimes he says, like, outlandish stuff, but what he's really saying is, you know, hey, what we're doing now is not working. Bring me some other options. The second thing that I think is really good about him is Coleman. Like, what you see is what you get, you know, I mean, like, there's no. There's no filter, you know, between what he's thinking and what he says. And sometimes that's arresting, sometimes that's offensive, but oftentimes it's also very, you know, effective, especially with world leaders who are used to. To some. To. To leaders who are maybe not completely sincere with them or direct with them. If he doesn't know something, like, he'll ask a question about it, you know, he'll say, you know, I just don't understand, you know, you know, the. The nature of corruption in your country. He'll say to a Ukrainian leader, I heard your country's, like, the most corrupt country. Tell me what's going on there. You know, or questions that he'll ask to Putin, like, you know, why are you in Syria? God, you've so many people are dying, and, you know, you're. You're enabling this, you know, this civil war and the refugee crisis, terror. Why are you doing that? Like, and so, you know, just by the. The way he asks the question can be effective, you know, in. In. In advancing U.S. interests and. Or also helping him, you know, kind of. Kind of clarify his approach to things. He listens to other people. People don't think he does, but he really does. He's a conversational learner. He, he's not going to sit through a big briefing of anything. But so these are all strengths, I think also he is kind of a warm host, right? You don't get that from, you know, the brash, you know, personality that you see on television. But when he welcomes foreign leaders, he's actually, you know, quite kind, you know, welcoming to them, hospitable. He might, you know, like, even those where he had some tension, like Angela Merkel, they had actually an affable relationship, you know, so I think that can be effective. So I, I think that a lot of people, you know, either you love him so much, you don't, you don't, you don't acknowledge as you, as you, as you mentioned, you know, his, his flaws and he's got flaws. We talk about that. But those who really despise him don't acknowledge that he does have certain qualities that, that, that are effective, you know, and his deficiencies, you know, or, you know, every, every president has deficiencies. He has them. And I would say that, that if, if Trump is really driven by anything, it's his desire for affirmation, maybe even adulation, right? This has a lot to do with the nature of his ego, right, and how he craves that kind of attention. And that can make him, you know, for some, an easy mark for some people, because they can push his buttons. Hey, you know, this will alienate your base, right? There may be the most adamant supporters who might not agree with, you know, with a certain policy. That's how people who are against that policy can try to manipulate him or also, you know, he, he wants to be seen as strong, right? He wants to be seen as decisive. This has a lot to do with his ego as well. So another way you could just say, oh, you know, it is, this will make you look weak. So, so people can push his buttons. He is very capable because that contrary nature, because of the challenging assumptions of making a difficult decision, move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, for example, that nobody's willing to do. But in some areas where he makes a decision that when it cut against his predilections, like his strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia, then people get in his ear, they push his buttons, and he oftentimes has a very difficult time keeping that decision. So he is erratic. I mean, in certain areas, some things he's dead on. Consistent reciprocity and trade, border security, deregulation, I mean, energy security, you know, what you're going to get in those areas. But in some of these areas, he carries with him this dissonance and that's where people play like they do with any president. Right. Most powerful person on earth know, you could say. Right. So there are a lot of people who want to influence him within the West Wing of the White House, within an administration, on the outside, in the private sector and internationally. Right. With foreign leaders. So in the book, I try to tell that story I was kind of reluctant about. Was it my favorite thing to write about, you know, because I thought, hey, do I really want to get, give people a playbook on how to push Donald Trump's buttons? And I thought, you know what, maybe this is a service to him, you know, because, and people around him so they can guard his independence of judgment, which is the title of one of my chapters, I think, you know, the national security advisor, that's kind of your main responsibility to guard the President's independence of judgment. Because again, you know, he's the person who was elected.

Coleman Hughes (24:33)

Yeah. And there, there are these features of his personality that once you know them, you can use them to help him, actually. And I see, I saw you doing this throughout your book and I think, you know, others did this after your term ended. It's like if the, if the President has forgotten why we have a maximum pressure strategy on North Korea, don't hand him a two page memo. Have him talk to the Prime Minister of Japan. Right. And, and that's how he'll get the message interpersonally, like you were saying, through talking to people. And you can make fun of that. And, and you know, I don't, I don't think it's a good thing that we have a president that doesn't want to read the memo. But that's the reality. And once you know that you can maturely act on that in order to get the, get, you know, give him more information in the. Right, in the right venues.

H.R. McMaster (25:24)

Right, Absolutely. And if you're somebody who thinks you like, you want to control the outcome. Right. The impulse among some people, some members of the cabinet, were to limit the number of engagements the President had. Hey, I, I was struggling all the time. Let him talk to more people. Right. Because, you know, I mean, he's, he's a real estate guy, right. He, you know, he built hotels and that, that's kind of how he did business. Like he went to the construction site, he talked to people, you know, he's, he enjoys that. And, and, and so talking to the combatant commanders. Right. The four stars who were in the joint commands in our armed forces. That was always positive from my view, you know, and, but there are people who wanted to limit that because, you know, what if he has a conversation and misremembers it or it comes up with kind of a crazy idea, you know, but these were, these are people oftentimes who weren't with him multiple times a day, you know, and, and you have to understand, you know, Donald Trump thinks out loud, you know, right? And when he says, like, he would say, general, General, why don't we just bomb them? And I'm like, bomb what, Mr. President? You know, the, the drug labs, drug labs in Mexico. And, and this is, you know, there's other people written about this, but, but I wrote about, in a different context, you know, and, and some people who were in the Oval Office with me at that time, they left kind of shell shocked, you know, and, but I huddled with them and I said, hey, he's, he's not talking really about bombing the, the labs. What he's talking about is that what is, what is happening now, what we're doing now is not working, right? You know, I mean, football stadiums full of Americans are dying every year from fentanyl poisoning. And so it's not working. What he wants us to do is to bring him options, bring him some new options. And I think, you know, I hope that the people around, you know, President Trump recognize that, that that's really what he wants is, you know, he wants options. The other, the other aspect, Coleman, that's effective with him is, is to, before you get into these kind of specifics, you know, what do we do about X, I mean, understand the problem more fully and then understand what he wants to achieve. So I would always bring him, hey. Or talk to him. What is your goal here? What are our objectives? And so, hey, if your objectives are really to counter China's unfair trade and economic practices and the weaponization of their status, mercantilist economic model against us, including maybe overcapacity, overproduction, trans shipment of steel and aluminum, you know, hey, Mr. President, do tariffs on our allies really help in that? Maybe not, you know, so I think it's key to get, you know, get the objective clear, and then as options come up, don't try to stifle them, but evaluate them based on what you're trying to achieve, based on what he wants to achieve. And I found that to be effective, you know, as long as I lasted. Coleman.

Coleman Hughes (28:20)

Yeah, so let's talk about NATO a little bit and South Korea, because this is something that came up over and over again is that Trump has an isolationist instinct in some ways. No doubt. He believes we're being ripped off by our NATO partners. He doesn't understand why we're spending so much money maintaining our troops in South Korea. And he would sort of probe you and ask you over and over again to explain, why are we in South Korea again? And you would sort of have to do it again and again. On the other hand, he does have an instinct for strength and reciprocity. And if they hit us, we're going to hit them 10 times as hard, which is a countervailing instinct inside of him.

H.R. McMaster (29:05)

Absolutely.

Coleman Hughes (29:06)

So, you know, what is your point of view on the importance of NATO, on the importance of South Korea? And do you think Trump's approach to kind of threaten a pull out in order to get them to, quote, unquote, pay their fair share? Do you think that's a legitimate.

H.R. McMaster (29:24)

Policy.

Coleman Hughes (29:25)

Goal for the United States, or do you think that's just misplaced priorities?

H.R. McMaster (29:29)

No, hey, the burden sharing, it's absolutely a policy goal and a valid one. Right. And, and you know, Trump, Trump was right about a lot of this, right? The burden sharing broadly. But he would say to Chancellor Merkel, angela, Angela, if you love NATO so much, why aren't you paying your dues? Which is the way he thought about it, they have arrears in their dues, which is the pledge to invest at least the equivalent of 2% of gross domestic product in defense. And then he would say, hey, if you're worried so much about Russia and we're over here defending you, and we were, with what was called a European deterrence initiative, were rotating U.S. forces into Germany and into Europe at an expense that was equivalent, Coleman, to one third of what Germany was spending on defense. Right. Just our rotation, the cost of our rotational forces there. And he said, why are you buying their gas? Why are you feeding Putin's ATM if you're so worried? And he was dead right about that. But what I would try to discourage, and there are a couple stories about this in the book, is, hey, Mr. President, that's all good. But once you threaten to get out of NATO or if you threaten to not defend certain countries, that's a gift of Vladimir Putin, because what he really wants to do, what Putin wants to do, is break NATO apart to reduce confidence in the alliance. And he's actively doing that in a number of ways. And I would show him, and others would show him the number of ways Putin was doing it. I think with Trump really You have to answer a series of questions with him, right? One is it so what? Why do we care. Why do we care about NATO? You know, then, then, you know, then to ask him, you know, you know, why do we have to do it? Right? Why can't somebody else do it? How much does it cost and can other people pay more? Right. And if you frame the discussion with him around those questions, I mean, that's kind of what he's after on almost everything, you know, and, and, and I, I think that his, he's got some, he'll have some good people around him who can do that. I mean, I'm really encouraged by Mike Waltz as a national security advisor, for example. I think, you know, he understands what his role is going to be and he's very accomplished guy and, you know, a lot of experience in, in the House of Representatives and the military. And I think that I, that, I mean, I'm super glad he's there, you know, and his deputy, Alex Wong, super competent guy too. So in terms of teeing up those options, to him having those discussions, facilitating those discussions with his Cabinet, right, And his national security team, I feel good about it. But you're right, Coleman, he, he is consistent on a lot of things, right? Hey, border security, deregulation, energy security. But he is, he has this dissonance and, and, and at the fundamental level, you know, it's peace through strength. Okay, he gets that, right. And, and, but also the impulse toward retrenchment. And I think, you know, as I was, you know, I wrote more about this. A lot of it, a lot of it wound up on the cutting room floor of the book, you know, which I have to thank my editor for, because I think he made it a heck of a lot, a lot more readable, you know, but he came of age in the 70s, you know, and, and what was 1970s New York like? It wasn't a pretty picture, right? We had, you know, we were, you know, we were a divided society. We had, we had, you know, kind of the, you know, the, the, the first president resign in, in our history. We had a lost war in Vietnam. We had stagflation. We had multiple energy crises. And then at, you know, at the end of the, at of the decade, we had a hostage crisis in Iran, you know, and I think this is what creates the sense America's been taken advantage of, you know, and, and, and he, he has that sort of sentiment with him like every day, and it makes him skeptical about sustained military commitments abroad, which of course is the best Way to deter war. Right. And I think the argument to make is, hey, Mr. President, it's a lot cheaper to prevent a war than to have to fight one. And I tell the story, Coleman, of his visit to Pearl harbor on his way to Asia and how I just hoped, right. That, you know, that that sense of history, you know, and the huge cost of that war resonated with him and resonate with him in connection with how important it is to not have to pay the price for readmission to a part of the world. And remember, China's laying claim to that part of the world, trying to exert control over the South China Sea, the part of the ocean through which one third of the world's surface trade flows, intimidating Taiwan, the threat to South Korea and Japan. You know, and I just try to answer those questions, hey, so what? Why do we care? Look at the shipping lanes, look at the density of the traffic. What's in it for us? What's in it for us is really our vision of what the rules of international discourse should be from an economic, financial, security perspective. And so, anyway, I'll stop right there, but I mean, I think helping him resolve that dissonance is going to be a critical role for Trump's new set of advisors here.

Coleman Hughes (34:44)

So how do you think the fact that this is his last term affects his decision making, his feelings and his incentives?

H.R. McMaster (34:53)

Yeah, well, I think he's going to feel a real sense of urgency from the beginning. He didn't get done what he wanted to get done in his first term, everything, certainly as quickly as he wanted to, you know, and, and so I think he's going to move out as, as fast as he can on some critical initiatives, you know, and, and I think at the top of the list will be deregulation, permitting reform, and removing barriers to what he calls energy dominance, you know, but unleashing America's energy potential. I don't, I'm not sure how he's going to look at defense yet, because he's got some real budget hawks. You know, the, the new director of OMB is a great, super competent public, public servant, but he's a real budget hawk, which is going to bump up against really his, his impulse to dramatically increase defense spending because we have a bow wave of deferred modernization and we have lack of capacity in our forces and so forth. But, you know, I think that he's just, the way it's going to affect him is have a real sense of urgency, and he has a very competent team in those areas. The Secretary of the treasury and what he's going to want to do. Coleman, you know, I mean, you know, the Make America Great again, it's really kind of what he's trying to do. Like, you know, a lot people say Trump, it's all about him. But he really does want to unleash what he views as the dormant potential of the country. And the people who are advising him, like Scott Bess in the treasury, their vision is to unleash the power of new and emerging technologies associated with artificial intelligence, for example, and apply those in a way that sort of jumpstart a second, you know, industrial revolution or equivalent of that, that allows America to gain a predominant position in the emerging global economy. I mean, that's his main focus. I believe that'll be his main focus in his, you know, whatever the first 100 days and beyond.

Coleman Hughes (36:50)

And do you think the fact that he doesn't have to worry about reelection will change any equations in his mind?

H.R. McMaster (36:56)

You know, I think so. I think what he's doing, though, and, you know, there are much better people than me to talk about it, is he's already kind of made clear that he wants to, to be able to almost designate his successor, right. To keep, you know, the, what he would describe maybe as the MAGA revolution or whatever going, you know, and you can see that in some of the people he's kneecapped, you know, up front, as well as some of the people who he's brought into the fold, you know. So, you know, I think that will be on his mind, like who he passes the baton to, and he, he will want to determine who that person is. Right, right. And you see that in some of his picks for his vice president, for example, and he's, of course, listening to family members and others, you know, about that. But I do think that what he will recognize is there's a midterm election coming up in two years, right. And he may not be able to keep both the House and the Senate as Republican. And so I think what you will see, Coleman, is a real sense of urgency in connection with the legislative agenda. And the President will have, you know, he's got some really competent people around him going into the nsc, of course, you know, somebody from, from the Hill as a National Security advisor. And, and you've got Kevin Hassert going into, as an economic, National Economic Council, who's fantastically competent. So I think you're going to see a lot of, you know, a lot of action on the Hill and the administration very active in trying to get that legislation through.

Coleman Hughes (38:28)

Okay, so getting off the Trump topic for now, I want to talk briefly about the major theaters of conflict in the world and where we are now, as opposed to four years ago, and how you would score kind of the Biden era on these particular theaters. So let's start with North Korea. As you wrote in your book, Obama told Trump that North Korea was the most challenging issue that we face, the biggest threat we face. How do you score the Biden administration on dealing with North Korea, and where do you think we are now?

H.R. McMaster (39:03)

Yeah, I think they really kind of looked away, Coleman. You know, and, and. And what's happened is, you know, the, the change with North Korea has a lot to do with a broader development involving a coalescing of what I would call an axis of aggressors. This is, you know, the two revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass of China and Russia, and then pulling into the fold now, North Korea. North Korea had been out in the cold. 2017, 2018. We responded to that warning from President Obama with a maximum pressure strategy that was aimed to convince Kim Jong Un that he was safer without the most destructive weapons on earth than he was with them. And it worked. But the summits that President Trump had, it dissipated that pressure just naturally, even though we didn't relax any of the sanctions. But then what has happened is the lifeline's been thrown to, To. To. To Korea, because 97% of their trade, you know, is with China. You know, a lot of their energy comes from, you know, from. From Russia. What they're getting now from Russia, as, I believe, technical assistance with their nuclear and their missile programs, as well as conventional capabilities in exchange for North Korean. North Koreans fighting on in Europe, you know, in the first major land war in Europe since World War II. How crazy is that? And then. And then with Kim Jong Un now, you know, because of the pressure letting up on him, I think he thinks he can get what he wants, which is sanctions relief. He wants to be able to keep some nukes. He thinks he can get maybe a weak nuclear agreement, and that will allow him to embark on sort of a nuclear blackmail campaign to drive to pull South Korea down. He really, really wants, Coleman, I believe, to unify the peninsula under the Kim family regime. So now he's kind of waiting for Donald Trump. You know, he thinks that with what he's doing, the support with Russia, that's another something on the table. Now he's resuming maybe ICBM tests, you know, and cruise missile tests. They tore down The Unification Arch he wrote into the constitution. South Korea is our only real enemy. That's all for Donald Trump because he's going to say our beef's not with you, you know. You know, our beef's not with anybody. It's just really with South Korea, you know, this really wealthy country that could be able to defend themselves anyway. What are you doing? I mean, so he's going to try to do that. It's going to, he's going to try to get US forces off the peninsula as part of a weak nuclear deal, basically. You know, that gets him sanctions. I, I don't think he's going to get any of that, but I think that's what if you can, if you. At least that's what I'm imagining. That Kim Jong Un. Right. And the only hereditary communist dictatorship in the world, you know, with a warped worldview. Right. This juche ideology that has made deprivation into a virtue. You know, I think that's the way he's thinking.

Coleman Hughes (41:50)

Yeah. Okay. What about China? How do you score the Biden administration on China? I mean, I think a lot of people pointed out that, you know, Trump, the Trump administration administration changed the status quo on China, as you pointed out earlier. And Biden extended a lot of those tariffs and extended the tough on China philosophy. Really? So how do you score Biden and where do you think we are today?

H.R. McMaster (42:17)

Yeah, I was scoring pretty well, you know, on China, except in one area in defense. I mean, you know, the threat from China is increasing. Right. Acts of war against treaty ally in the Philippines, the first violations of Japanese airspace by Chinese military aircraft ever. You know, the continued threats to tort to Taiwan, the aggressive action through the whole South China Sea against Malaysian vessels, Vietnamese vessels, our own ships and aircraft. And the Biden defense budget was a real reduction, you know. So hey, if you talk a lot about the China threat, okay, that's great. But how about doing something about it? You know, and then, and then, and then of course there's the massive backlog of weapons. But overall, you know, recognizing the need to compete, I think putting together some of the international fora and strengthening them, like the Aukus agreement, I think that was quite positive. The Indo Pacific economic framework, which is about the best you could get from any political party based on the impulse toward, you know, toward, toward, you know, protectionism or bilateral rather than multilateral trade agreements, that was positive. I think some of the export controls, the outbound investment screening, initial actions, but they were kind of half hearted and sort of like in the Trump administration where you had the Secretary of the treasury arguing for more of, you know, kind of a huggy approach to China, you know, and then, and then others saying, hey, these guys aren't, they're never going to be our friends. They're trying to undermine the whole system. You had that same kind of dynamic a bit also centered on treasury and between treasury and Commerce. I wish that, that we had just done what Gina Raimondo wanted to do, who's the Secretary of Commerce, you know, because I think she was dead on in terms of what was necessary to counter China's economic aggression. But hey, you know, it's a tough problem set. There is more continuity than discontinuity between Trump and Biden and I think there'll be continuity with, with Trump coming back in as well. And I was heartened to see it, actually. Coleman. You know, I mean, thank goodness that at least there's one area, right, where, where we can see a sustained bipartisan commitment. I would say the Hill gets a lot of credit for this too, with the China Select Committee. For those who are lamenting the dysfunction of Congress, it's a bright spot, you know. And so I think on China, you know, thank you to Xi Jinping. I want to send him flowers and a box of chocolates, you know, I mean, because he's helped us, you know, through his own brutality, the extinguishment of human freedom in Hong Kong, the continued persecution and I think campaign of cultural genocide against the Uyghurs, know, the laying claim of the South China Ocean. How about bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death on Himalayan frontier? Like you can go on massive cyber attacks, you know, against, against us and cyber espionage. I mean, I think, you know, he deserves, Xi Pink deserves a lot of the credit too.

Coleman Hughes (45:03)

Yeah. How disadvantageous is it that we in a democracy where we have elections every four years and I think Xi Jinping made some comment to somebody saying, you know, you guys have too, your elections are too frequent. Right. How disadvantageous is it that we, it's more difficult for us to sustain a policy more than four years, whereas our adversaries can have a 20 year plan.

H.R. McMaster (45:30)

Yeah, I think that's true. You know, and, and also because they're authoritarians, they can direct stuff to happen. Right. We'll never have something like they have in China, which is the, you know, military civil fusion or one belt one road where you can give orders, you know, to state owned enterprises to go build stuff or your national bank to go in debt countries so you can undermine their sovereignty that way, you know, so there are advantages. But you know what, Coleman? I think these authoritarian regimes, they look really strong, but they're actually quite brittle. And you know what? I think we're winning. I mean, as ugly as our democracies are, not only in the US and the degree to which we were at each other's throats, thank goodness, I think we had a very decisive election. I think if we had not, if we had had kind of a razor thin, you know, election and one side doubted the legitimacy of it, that our adversaries would have been very much emboldened, you know, but, but I think that, you know, our democracies are resilient and they're brittle. I mean, look at what's happening right now. I mean, we had this mantra of de escalation against Iran, right? And Iran has been profoundly weak. Their threat network has been profoundly weak. And the Israelis just demonstrated, hey, you know, escalate. And this is what can happen is you can secure your nation. And they gave a devastating blow to Hezbollah, which then rippled into Syria because Assad's murderous regime was reliant so heavily on Hezbollah. Now Iran is in a real bad situation. They have a huge financial burden. If they're going to rebuild their terrorist and threat network, they don't have the money to do it. Look at Russia. Russia can't sell the bonds they're issuing. They're spending 47% on, on defense. They have a labor shortage. Stagflation is setting, is, is sitting in and they're, they're sitting on a pile of cash that they can't convert. You know, so Russia is in a very difficult position. And by the way, they're taking, they're taking, you know, a thousand to fifteen hundred casualties a day. A day in, in, in, in Ukraine now they're making gains. And Ukrainians have got a hard time too. But hey, you know, I don't think Russia bringing in North Koreans and now a Yemeni battalion, that's not a sign of strength, you know, and then China has huge youth unemployment. They have the real estate, you know, crisis. Xi Jinping seems like he's doing everything to stifle the economy with the crackdown on the tech sector. And then zero Covid and then, you know, he go, he's going after any kind of companies that provide transparency into Chinese companies and then wondering why he's not getting any foreign investment. I mean, so hey, I just think Coleman, when we look at ourselves, it's all, it's all in public, right? I mean, it's all of our Uglinesses out there. They look really good from the outside, you know, but actually, I think those regimes are quite brittle.

Coleman Hughes (48:20)

Yeah. Okay. Speaking of Russia and Ukraine, how do you score the Biden administration's. How do you score them on. On that front? And what do you expect Trump to do? How do you think that Trump's imminent arrival has changed the incentives for. For Putin and for Ukraine?

H.R. McMaster (48:39)

Well, you know, I'll tell you. Yeah. I think the Biden station failed to deter Putin in part because of the disastrous, humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, the responsibility for which was shared, I think, between the Trump and Biden administration, but. But mainly on the Biden administration, the way it was conducted. And that's what emboldened Putin. Right. What emboldens Putin and Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un and Ayatollah Khamenei is the perception of weakness. And I think that weakness is provocative. And that provoked Putin from the disasters, withdrawn Afghanistan from August of 2021 to the massive reinvasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. And. And then the Biden administration misread Putin. I mean, how many times do we have to learn that Putin does not need his security concerns allayed? Right. This is what George W. Bush tried to do. It's what President Obama tried to do with the reset strategy. It's what President Trump thought he could do is come to some kind of entente with Putin and he would feel better about himself and the world and recognize his future was with us. No, that's not going to happen with Putin. Putin is a driven man. He's driven to restore Russia to national greatness and to do it by dragging everybody else down, you know, and so when President Biden went to Geneva to meet with Putin and laid out his red lines, you know what that means for Putin? Oh, everything else is a green. Is a green line. He pulled our ships out of the Black Sea. He listed publicly everything he wouldn't do to support the Ukrainians and to remove any kind of ambiguity on. On Putin's part. He withdrew our advisors, evacuated our embassy and scuttled our embassy, inflicting tens of millions of dollars of damage on our embassy building. You know, I mean, it's almost like he was green lighting the invasion. Then they recovered, you know, they, you know, put together the coalition with the Europeans. Europeans did more than most people expected to support the Ukrainians. But then the big mistake, Coleman, was this like this escalation management mentality. I mean, I think. I think it's like, you know, it sounds to me like it's the, the Vietnam era advisors like throwing their voices into the present, you know, with, with, with this, this language of, you know, of ds, you know, of escalation management and not wanting to provoke Putin and the way that the assistance to Ukrainians was dripped in, was meted out, you know, and, and debated like agonizing debates. Should we give them tanks, you know, or longer range missiles and should have the authorities and how many and like, I mean, really. So I think, you know, if there's a chance for Trump to sustain support and, or increase support, people should point out to him, hey, you know, the Biden administration's mistake was they didn't support Ukraine enough. And Putin's not going to give up anything. He's not going to come to a reasonable settlement until he thinks he's losing, you know, so, so I hope that, you know, the advisors around President Trump can help him understand their options. Right, hey, you know, a long term low interest loan like we gave Finland, who then paid it back in full. I mean, there are examples that could be used with President Trump, I think, to help sustain, to help sustain the support for Ukraine, which obviously I think they deserve. But the other key argument I think for President Trump is to say, hey, the war in Ukraine is connected to this axis of aggressors overall. I mean, if you care about Iran, hey, Iran's giving them shahed drones, you know, and missiles. What are they getting in support? They're getting support from Russia. They were, you know, in Syria. They're getting Russian intelligence that goes to the, the Houthis who are, who are firing missiles at international shipping in the Bab El Mandeb, you know, and so, you know, they're getting all sorts of help with sanctions evasion and so forth. They're helping each other. You know, if you're worried about China, you know, China is enabling Iran with technology, with assistance and by the way, buying 97% of Iran's oil, you know, So I mean, I think making the connections for him to show him that if we throw Ukraine under the bus, what do you think all the countries in the Indo Pacific region are going to do when they look at us? Who's got her back? Nobody, man. Hey, time to bandwagon with Beijing, you know, so I hope he gets that from his advisors. And again, this is kind of that, this dissonance. Like he gets that, hey, you open a negotiation from a position of strength, right? This is kind of how he uses tariffs a lot. Hey, right, slap the tariff on now, then have the Trade discussion, You know, I mean, I hope that he does that with, you know, with weapons for Ukraine and addresses some of the disinformation, man. I mean, you know, you hear a lot from the people who, who want to throw Ukraine under the bus, you know, oh, it's corrupt. Oh, look at all of our money that's going over there, you know, hey, the money's being spent in the United States, you know, helping expand our, our industrial base and those weapons and munitions, you know, are then being sent to Ukraine. So I just hope that, that the right people, you know, help him understand again the answer to those questions. So what?

Coleman Hughes (53:54)

Yeah, why do we think another one of the, one of the frequent talking points is that, and you sort of address this, is that we really provoked Putin to invade Ukraine with NATO expansion, with meddling in the, you know, the, the coup of Yanukovych and all this stuff. I mean, to me, you know, there's a smart version of that argument that, that legitimately criticizes some of our decisions, but it just misses the elephant in the room, which is Vladimir Putin, who he is and what he wants and what he's consistently wanted. And ultimately, when Tucker Carlson asked him in that interview, whenever it was a year ago or so, why did you invade Ukraine on February 24? He began the answer in the year 800 A.D. right. So I think that should tell you everything you need to know about his ideology, his motivations, and, you know, the fact that we are not to blame for everything in the world. Other people have their own.

H.R. McMaster (55:01)

I mean, think, think of him as Catherine the Great without the hoop skirt, you know, and, and, and, and, you know, I think you're so, I mean, look at the pattern of activity, you know, I mean, he comes in, he kind of lays it out in his New Year's Day speech in the year 2000, he takes over, you know, what he wants to do then. Then he, you know, he engages in assassination attempts in 2003 in Ukraine, 2003 in Ukraine, you know, and then he's, you know, how about the massive denial of service attacks against the Baltic states and trying to foment an uprising there so he could subsume the Baltic states again. Invasion of Georgia, 2000. I mean, the list goes on, man. I mean, we didn't provoke that. And, and, and also, you know, look at the relative security of the new NATO members, the Baltic states, Poland. Right. You know, NATO worked okay? It worked. And you know, those who, like, you know, the so called realists who are really, again, these romantics, you know, who say that, you know, this is just a reality. They would have to get used to being dominated by Russia because that's like Russia's right. I mean, tell that to the Estonians, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Poles. Right? They don't buy into that argument. And so it's, I think, yeah, the whole, the whole NATO expansion or enlargement equals Russian aggression. Remember his arguments back then? You know, hey, he was, he was saving, he was saving the Russian people, you know, from, you know, from Ukrainian Nazis. Right. In a country that was, is led by a Russian speaking Jew. Okay. Are you kidding me? So I think it's pretty clear that his ambitions are not in reaction to what NATO's done. He has his own aspirations and he's not going to stop. Right. He's already annexed Belarus. Look what he's just done on the Romanian election. He turned the Slovakian election. Look at what he's doing in Georgia to deny the Georgian people a path forward to a better relationship with the EU and so forth. Look what he tried to do in Moldova with the referendum on, on, on, on the eu. I mean, he's not stopping. He's cutting undersea cables. He's, he's actually fighting a war against us. We just haven't acknowledged it. Right. You know, incendiary bombs on DHL aircraft, probably his right. And attacking infrastructure in Europe, you know, so, hey, I just think the way to deter Putin is strength. The guy, I, I see him as, you know, a bully and a coward wrapped up into one. And I hope that President Trump will see that. I think what's also likely, Coleman, Putin can't help himself, man. He's gonna try to humiliate President Trump and that's gonna backfire on him. They are really vulnerable if President Trump goes to Mohammed bin Salman and says, hey, hey, Prince, how about doing me a solid and pumping some more oil and driving the price down to $40 a barrel for about six months. What happens to Vladimir Putin then? I'm telling you, he's nothing good. And they'll put immense pressure on Moscow.

Coleman Hughes (58:13)

Yeah. Okay, so before I let you go, I just want to ask a little bit about some of the cast of characters coming in. You said you had a lot of respect for, for Mike Waltz. We also, we can expect Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State, which is a pick that I've seen. Mostly people view him as very serious and as, as a good, as a good pick. I'm curious if you have any insight into that. And then I also want to ask you about Pete Heth and, and Tulsi Gabard, which are the two choices that have given me the most concern. In the case of Hegseth, because I'm not sure he has any experience managing a bureaucracy that large. And in the case of Tulsi Gabbard, because she's shown a pattern of thinking America is the bad guy around the world and distrusting our own intelligence and defending people like Julian Assange and so forth. So what do you make of these. These characters?

H.R. McMaster (59:19)

Yeah, so I would say I kind of align with what you said already. I mean, Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio, I think he's been extremely strong on foreign policy. You know, if you go back to his early statements, kind of on the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and the threat to security and our prosperity, he's been crystal clear about that and was way ahead, you know, of most of his contemporaries, on recognizing the nature of that threat. I worked with him very closely on, on the Trump administration, Cuba policy, and he was extremely thoughtful and reasoned and helpful and did a lot of the work, he and his staff, on that policy. He's extremely professional. He's a superb communicator, which you really need from a public diplomacy perspective from your secretary of state. And he's an engaging, affable person, which for the country's leading diplomat, that kind of matters. And so, so he'll have great relationships across our hemisphere, which I think is we. We don't appreciate enough. And I could go on. So Rubio, great, great. Super enthusiastic about it. On, on, on. On the Secretary of Defense nominee, Hegseth. I just, I would have the same kind of questions. Right. I, I hope that. I hope that the senators, you know, do their job. I think they will. And, and their job is to. Is advice. Right, Right. This is what James Madison wrote about, or was it John Adams? I can't remember. Federalist76, I think it was. In terms of the role of the Senate in advising consent, how important that is. And it's an important position for all the reasons you mentioned. There are big parts of the military that resemble a big business, and to be able to get the efficiencies out of that business and to help it run effectively. And then, of course, you have a huge prioritization task in terms of modernization and balance of the force and so forth. You have a big recruiting issue. The issue that he's been most focused on is an issue. I mean, I think that there has been an effort to sort of push a post modernist, post colonial reified philosophies, you know, equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity approaches in the Department of Defense. But I think it's really important that whoever goes in there doesn't, with the correctives that they administer, try to drag the military into partisan politics from a different perspective. Right. We need a bold line between our military and partisan politics. And then on Tulsi Gabbard, I mean, I think if you look at the statements that she's made about the Assad regime, I mean, that's a guy. He killed 600,000 people. That guy, know, and, and left half of his population dead, wounded, displaced, or, or in dungeons, you know, and, and so I, I think. I think there are going to be some tough questions there. And, and, and kind of also the, The. The affinity for, you know, for other authoritarians, including, Including Putin, as you mentioned, kind of taking up their, Their warped reasoning, you know, for. For their actions. So, yeah, I think. I mean, those are the two I'd be most concerned about. And I think what we have to do is see what questions are asked and what happens in the confirmation process.

Coleman Hughes (62:36)

All right, well, thank you so much for coming on my show. I'm going to plug your book one more time. It's really fantastic. It's worth reading for anyone that wants a window not only into Trump, but also into the bigger and more important issue of how these decisions get made. What actually is the reality of a responsible public servant trying to do the best for America's interests in the jungle of D.C. and it will give you a far more honest window into that than just reading the newspaper. I mean, this is one. The last thing I wanted to say is I forgot to bring this up, is just reading your book, no one comes out looking worse than the media because, you know, for two reasons. One is, like, just absolutely inaccurate reporting about what's going on in the White House is like, you give this example.

H.R. McMaster (63:33)

Of.

Coleman Hughes (63:36)

I think, you know, making Trump made a statement about a strong Europe being important. Right. And you fought for that line, which was really a message to Putin. Right. That Europe's united against you. And, you know, some journalists took that as a white supremacist. You know, dog whistle.

H.R. McMaster (63:54)

I think they use dog whistle.

Coleman Hughes (63:55)

Yeah, yeah. Which is just, like, it's, like, so deranging. But really, the more important thing is, like, what came out in your book is that people who are trying to, you know, axe you basically would anonymously leak things that were just totally not true. And the press just uncritically reports this. And half of these leaks, it looks like were coming from Steve Bannon, who was really the worst of the worst. And yet there's this norm in the press that you can just leak things that are that have no source and say, sources in the White House. And it really makes it much more difficult for honest people to actually do their jobs. So that's just one last thing I wanted to get out there before I let you go.

H.R. McMaster (64:39)

Hey, thanks, Coleman. But I hope the overall theme is one of, hey, it was a privilege to do it. And I would just encourage anybody, you know, if you have an opportunity to serve in any capacity in the military or out of uniform as a civilian. Our nation needs our best young men and women. So, yeah. So, Coleman, thanks for the opportunity to be with you, man. It was great to have the conversation. Thanks.

Coleman Hughes (65:01)

Thank you.