Trump Defends McMaster After Week of Attacks; "Very Pro-Israel"

The New York Times reports:

President Trump defended Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his embattled national security adviser, on Friday in the face of a full-bore campaign by the nationalist wing of his political coalition accusing him of undermining the president’s agenda and calling for his dismissal.

General McMaster has angered the political right by pushing out several conservatives on the national security staff and cautioning against ripping up the nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama without a strategy for what comes next. His future has been in doubt amid speculation that Mr. Trump might send him to Afghanistan.

But after two days of unrelenting attacks on General McMaster by conservative activists and news sites, complete with the Twitter hashtag #FireMcMaster, the president weighed in to quash such talk. “General McMaster and I are working very well together,” he said in a statement emailed to The New York Times. “He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”...

Conservatives have been dubious about General McMaster since the start, but opened up a concerted assault on him this week after he pushed out Ezra Cohen-Watnick, his senior director for intelligence, the latest of at least four hard-liners to leave the National Security Council staff in recent weeks.

McMaster will stay unless real dirt is leaked on him.

But McMaster is concerned. The Atlantic's White House correspondent Rosie Gray reports:

The provocative right-wing blogger and activist Mike Cernovich has launched a sustained attack on McMaster, including setting up a website called McMasterLeaks.com...

Cernovich’s assault on McMaster seems to be getting attention inside the White House. Even before this week’s drama, the national-security adviser was aware of Cernovich and concerned about his access to information from the inside, sources said. As previously reported by Bloomberg, McMaster referenced Cernovich in an all-hands meeting in July, and batted down talk of the Obama “holdovers” who’ve become a point of contention both inside the White House and in the conservative media.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, McMaster also mentioned Cernovich at an NSC senior-directors meeting that day, which roughly 20 people attended. “He did bring it up and said, ‘This guy’s been targeting our people, he is posting personal information that has to have come from the inside,’” the source close to McMaster said. McMaster “really gets upset when he thinks people under his command, under his chain of command, are being unfairly attacked.”

 -RW