Putin manipulated "ego and insecurities" of US president – Trump's former advisor
Herbert McMaster, a former US national security adviser to Donald Trump, has revealed that Russian ruler Vladimir Putin used the "ego and insecurities" of the former US president in order to gain influence over him.
As cited by The Guardian, McMaster reveals in his new memoir book by McMaster At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House that following the poisoning in the UK of Sergei Skripal, a Russian former intelligence officer, and his daughter by Putin’s agents in March 2018, Trump sat in the White House, enjoying an article by The New York Times "Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics".
McMaster recalls that Trump wrote an appreciative note on the copy of the newspaper with a felt-tip pen and asked the staff of the White House to hand it to Putin. Later, when Putin’s role in the Skripal poisoning became clear, McMaster asked not to do this.
McMaster believes that the goal of Putin’s flattery was to drive a wedge between Trump and his advisors (including McMaster), urging the US to take a harsher stance against the Kremlin.
"Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery… Like his predecessors George W Bush and Barack Obama, Trump was overconfident in his ability to improve relations with the dictator in the Kremlin," McMaster writes.
McMaster also recalls a few cases when Trump criticised him due to his harsh position regarding Moscow. One of them concerned the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
He states that Trump "connected all topics involving Russia" with Mueller’s report and allegations by Democrats and other opponents that his campaign and Trump personally had conspired with "Russia’s disinformation campaign".
Another episode occurred in July 2017, when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Hamburg and had a long private conversation. McMaster reveals that Trump was sceptical about his warning that Putin was trying to outsmart him.
Trump fired McMaster from the position of the US national security adviser in March 2018 after he spent a little more than a year in the office. So far, McMaster has been one of the few top Trump White House officials who have not publicly criticised his views on Russia.
Former Trump’s advisor Fiona Hill stated in her book published in the spring of this year that Donald Trump, while in the office of the US president, made it clear that he believed Ukraine must be part of Russia.