McMaster Is 'Being Used' for His General's Stars, His Old Military Comrades Say
The national security adviser is also a current Army officer, which means he isn’t supposed to take place in partisan activity—and is supposed to always tell the whole truth.
KIMBERLY DOZIER
NOAH SHACHTMAN
06.01.17 9:42 PM ET
A growing cadre of former military officers who served with Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster are quietly calling for him to retire from service, worried the embattled Trump administration is tarnishing the U.S. military’s reputation by deploying their own personal three-star general as a political shield.
In recent weeks, McMaster has acted almost as a White House spokesperson, thrust into the spotlight to promise that President Donald Trump didn’t reveal anything inappropriate when he shared another spy agency’s intelligence with two Russian officials in the Oval Office. McMaster was also the face—or the voice—of the administration on Trump’s first foreign trip, giving off-camera interviews to explain what the president hoped to accomplish from Saudi Arabia to NATO.
Trump himself gave no interviews, as news broke back in the states that his son-in-law and key organizer of the trip, Jared Kushner, had reportedly sought to establish back-channel communications with Russia, using Russian communications equipment. McMaster claimed he was “not concerned” by “back-channel communications,” though fellow military professionals say what Kushner proposed went far beyond discreet diplomacy.
“It makes me uncomfortable that a serving military officer is in that role,” said a retired senior military officer who calls McMaster a friend. “The credibility he has is precisely why they are using him as a spokesman. I think that’s unfortunate.”
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