The NPR Politics Podcast - McMaster Out As National Security Adviser, Bolton In

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

There's been another big shake up on President Trump's team. H.R. McMaster is out as National Security Adviser, and former UN Ambassador John Bolton is in. And, after threatening a veto this morning, President Trump signed the $1.3 trillion dollar spending bill Congress passed yesterday, funding the government through September. This episode: host/congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Sharon Butler from my art studio down under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded on 205 Eastern on Friday, March 23rd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all NPR's political coverage on the NPR One app, NPR.org, and of course, your local NPR station. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. There's been another big shakeup on President Trump's team. H.R. McMaster is out as National Security Advisor and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is in. And after threatening a veto this morning,

President Trump has signed the $1.3 trillion spending bill, which funds the government through the end of September. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Michelle Kellerman. I cover the State Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. How's everybody doing? Oh, we're back.

Yeah. You know, today's like one of those days where I just think back to the great movie Gladiator, where he's he just slays everyone. It's this gruesome, gory scene. And he just stands back and looks at the arena and says, are you not entertained? Well, there's been this and they all cheer him on. So what do you think about? It seems sort of apt now. Yeah. There's been this big shift lately where it seems like President Trump is now putting in place the administration he wanted all along, but he felt constrained by for a while and didn't have this team in place. And Michelle, that's why you're with us. Yeah. Nice to have you again. Nice to be here. Somebody quits. Michelle Kellerman comes on the podcast. And there seems

to be a lot of people shifting around in the foreign policy world. It's like when George Bush was vice president, he had this this phrase of you die, I fly. It's like you get fired. Michelle is here. So this this moved McMaster out. Bolton in had been telegraphed for a while. A lot of people assumed it would happen, but it's a significant shift in style and substance and views of the world. Michelle, you've covered Bolton for a long time. A lot of people are very wary of his views on Iran, on North Korea, talking about preemptive war, being a big cheerleader for the war in Iraq.

What is his reputation and track record? Well, that is his reputation. You know, a former Bush administration official told us that he had a reputation as a bomb thrower rather than a consensus builder. And look, you know, the national security adviser is supposed to be the one building consensus, right, between the State Department, the Defense Department and presenting those kinds of views to the president. But here's a guy who comes in with a very strong ideology, maybe one more in line with President Trump, though he was also a proponent of the Iraq War, which is something that President Trump said he wasn't going to do. President Trump said he wasn't going to get involved in other kinds of costly wars. But here you have a guy who has recommended striking North Korea, striking Iran. Well, what's striking to me is that you've got someone like Rex Tillerson, right, who he leaves the State Department earlier this month.

Trump fires him, puts in place Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director and a former pretty hardline congressman. He's at State Department. It's not like Rex Tillerson was doing a lot to build up the State Department and build up diplomacy. But the shift from McMaster and Tillerson to Bolton and Pompeo, boy, that is certainly a radical shift. Tam, I want to ask you about McMaster in a second. But first, Michelle, we're familiar with John Bolton more recently from his role being a pundit on Fox News, as are many people coming into the administration. He's on TV a lot these days.

But he was a member of the Bush administration and even an administration of neocons who advocated for aggressive intervention in other countries. He was even controversial at the time. Could you remind us of what exactly he did in the Bush administration and what his role was? He was the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control. And he did have this reputation of a guy who was at the State Department in charge of intelligence described Bolton this way. He said he's a kiss up, kick down sort of guy, that he treated lower level staff people very badly. You know, he pressured them to change their intelligence analysis. He had that kind of reputation of being very aggressive. Now, I also just talked today to a guy who worked with him in the in the administration who says, you know, this is someone who is very aggressive. And he said,

but that might be something that exactly Trump is looking for, trying to make the bureaucracy do the things he wants them to do. He knows the bureaucracy really well. He's a lawyer. He's very smart. He was at the UN. He couldn't get confirmed to go to the United Nations because of his controversy, but he was a recess appointment up there. And, you know, he did understand the UN system very well and got some resolutions that were quite strong. So, you know, he was pretty good about making policy actually work or stymieing it if he didn't like it. So, Tam, H.R. McMaster is out. He says he's going to retire. He came in when Michael Flynn was forced out very early in the Trump administration, how do we describe the career arc of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster?

Well, he was a decorated military general, three-star army general, and also a real intellectual. had written a book that is quite influential in military circles and then came in after Michael Flynn's 24 days as a national security advisor. Flynn, of course, has now pled guilty to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with Robert Mueller's investigation. So H.R. McMaster comes in to this civilian job of national security advisor. And from what we are told and what our colleague Tom Bowman has reported, he never really meshed with the president in terms of personality. H.R. McMaster is sort of professorly in a way. And President Trump didn't like the lecture so much. And to add to that, you know, if you have that going to Bolton, I mean, Bolton also, as I said, he's a lawyer. He's very smart. He gets down in the weeds on policy.

But he also knows how to go on Fox News and give zingers and talk in soundbites. Yeah, I don't think H.R. McMaster talks in soundbites in quite the same way that John Bolton does. Right. What I also think is kind of ironic is the fact that now you're seeing kind of a whittling down of the generals in some respects. Right. And yet we're moving toward a more hawkish foreign policy. And I think that there is a thing within the military and state department community that people on the outside of the military sometimes are even more ready to act than generals in the military because they follow protocol. They're restrained in what they can and can't do. They're used to hierarchy and

following orders and playing by the rules. And it may very well be that President Trump wants something more freewheeling. And you're certainly going to get that with someone like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, for that matter. But John Bolton, you know, one big area that we're all obviously on the edge of our seats about that we haven't mentioned yet, North Korea. Yeah. I mean, just last month, February 28th, he wrote an op ed for The Wall Street Journal called The Legal Case for Striking North Korea first. And no matter what John Bolton wants to say going into the White House, to say that he is going to go by what the president says,

he's going to be the man who's principally first in the ear of the president. I wonder, Michelle, what your thoughts are. Well, and also Pompeo, you know, he'll be the one getting him ready. And ironically, it was Secretary Tillerson who was really trying to keep the channels open to North Korea to make this possibility to have a dialogue. And he was fired basically right after President Trump decided, hey, I'm going to go meet with Kim Jong-un. And the Defense Department keeps saying there is no good military option here. And the best option is diplomacy. And I'm sure that's what, you know, Mattis will keep saying in the National Security Council environment setting.

But whether or not John Bolton agrees with that is a different story. Well, let's listen to a little of what Bolton has said about North Korea in his role as a Fox News contributor. And then I want to hear one more clip after that. But first, this is him talking recently on Fox about how he views American options in North Korea. You're down to two choices. Eliminate the regime through reunification or through coup. That's sort of a second best solution, in my view, or eliminate the weapons. That's what it comes down to. But Bolton was on Fox again last night talking about how he views his role as national security advisor. And here's what he said.

Frankly, what I've said in private now is behind me, at least effective April the 9th. And the important thing is what the president says and what advice I give him. people on the internet where opinions live uh who have been worried all along that president trump's hawkish view of the world could lead the u.s into some sort of military conflict seemed very concerned last night that subbing out mcmaster for bolton could heighten that possibility what do you make of that concern how much of a difference can one person make and how do you make of that concern? How much of a difference can one person make? And how do you envision having covered him, Bolton's views and the way he would carry himself in this role and in these meetings? Well, let's not forget McMaster is not exactly a dove here either. So I'm not sure there's a huge difference in their approach. It's more who's willing to talk to President Trump and get him ready for a negotiation and make sure he doesn't veer off the talking points. Or, you know, he's a guy who just seems to want to

do it himself. I mean, he decided to accept this invitation and the administration hadn't even heard directly from the North Koreans. They only heard this from the South Koreans at this meeting. And I don't think we've heard since. Yeah. Have there been any updates on where what the timeline is? Last I heard there, there hadn't been and there hadn't been any even specific communications with the North Koreans about this. So he's a very impulsive leader. And I don't know how John Bolton reigns him in or if he even tries. Tam, so McMaster is just the latest person in the White House to be ousted. How has that affected day-to-day operations in the White House? Just to put this in perspective, over the course of 16 days, there have been three really high-profile departures from the White House announced. You had Gary Cohn, the economic advisor. And I guess

this isn't the White House, but you have Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state. And now you have the national security advisor, H.R. McMaster. That is a huge, huge amount of turnover in a very short period of time. It is truly a remarkable thing that leads to some amount of instability. The turnover is striking. But the other thing that hits me, you know, last night when we saw that McMaster was going to be out, you know, it reminded me that a week ago, Sarah Sanders had tweeted, the press secretary had tweeted, just spoke to President and General H.R. McMaster. Contrary to reports, they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC. That was one week earlier. And it really does make you feel like no matter what questions we ask, no matter how we try to pen in what information is coming out from these officials, that you can't trust what's being said.

Well, and what the White House claimed in response to that is that they have been talking about it for a while. It wasn't going to be imminent. But then because there were so many rumors swirling, they decided just to accelerate the pace of the departure of H.R. McMaster. But even Bolton on TV last night was saying that he didn't realize he was about to get the job. So, Michelle, last question for you. You talked a lot about the Iran deal, these possible negotiations with North Korea. Any other key areas of global politics that you think are worth paying attention to over the coming weeks to see how this shakeup affects our policy and our approach? Russia. Oh, yeah.

Let's not forget. Huh. I mean, you know, John Bolton has been hawkish on Russia over the years, and he wouldn't answer questions last night in that Fox interview about this whole idea of whether, you know, that Trump called Putin to congratulate him on the re-election. He kind of brushed that off. But let's see if there's any kind of change in approach there. Though McMaster was one of the more hawkish voices on Russia, and it didn't seem to affect the president's views of many things. That's right. So that's that.

But there's one more thing to talk about before we go today, and that is the drama we had today after President Trump tweeted this morning he was considering vetoing the $1.3 trillion spending bill that Congress passed yesterday that would have caused a government shutdown since the deadline is midnight Friday and Congress is out of town. But ultimately, Trump did sign the measure. Therefore, as a matter of national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill. There are a lot of things that I'm unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have had in this bill,

but we were, in a sense, forced, if we want to build our military, we were forced to have. There are some things that we should have in the bill. But I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again. So, Tam, you're at the White House. This is another arc of everyone thinks the president's going to do something. Then he puts out on Twitter, he just might not. We don't know. There's hours of uncertainty before ultimately saying he's going to sign this bill. Yeah, it was a really bizarre day. I realize that's becoming normal.

But it was this very weird day where no one knew what was going on. The tweets seemed to come out of nowhere, except that, you know, that this big spending bill had taken a lot of heat on Fox and Friends. And then the president tweets he's thinking about vetoing it. And then we're in the sort of reality TV, wait to see what happens after the break, kind of a standby for four hours. Meanwhile, Congress had already gone home. And then ultimately, the president, as you say, signs the bill. And it's the very reason that was cited for why he would sign it.

And Domenico, two things that jumped out to you were the fact that President Trump called for an end to the filibuster and he called for a line item veto, the ability for him to to strike specific lines out of this budget, something that I believe has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. You're right. When the president calls for the filibuster to be eliminated, which is not the first time he's done this, right? He did that. And then he also calls for this, giving him the line item veto. This just strikes me as a president who is utterly frustrated by the strictures of American democracy. He doesn't want to have to go through the process. The process is really annoying. It's frustrating. He wants to expand the powers of the presidency to be able to get things through that he wants to get through when he wants them to get them through. And then you turn around and realize there are all these checks and balances that the founders set up. And that makes it very difficult for somebody who wants

to appear to be a strong leader and get done what he wants to get done. And I do wonder what that's going to mean for him as the years go on, because every president has talked about the fact that the White House is confining, that they're frustrated by divided power. And this is how this president is acting when he's got control of both chambers, the House and the Senate. What happens if Democrats take over the House in the fall? He just seems really frustrated with the entire process. And I just don't know what that's going to mean going forward. That is it for this week. We'll be back in your feet again soon. You can keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station. And since we're recording this on Friday, every Saturday morning, we send out a great newsletter flagging some of our more interesting

stories over the course of the week. You can sign up for it. It's really good at NPR.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Michelle Kellerman. I cover the State Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. How much would you pay to avoid morning traffic? Why are plane tickets to Boise so expensive? I'm Cardiff Garcia, co-host of The Indicator. In every episode, we take on a new, unexpected idea to help you make sense of the day's news. Listen every afternoon on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the headlines, On Point talks with newsmakers and real people about issues that matter most. Listen to On Point now on NPR One or wherever you listen to podcasts.