HR McMaster was supposed to be the ‘adult in the room’ — the anti-Flynn. He was brought on board in the middle of the Michael Flynn crisis to provide legitimacy and solid leadership to a White House badly in need of it.
A true American hero, HR McMaster is a soldier’s soldier, a warrior’s warrior, the savior of Tal Afar. He spoke truth to power as a young Army officer and his career suffered for it. Rescued by Gen. David Petraeus, he made to the top rungs of the US Army.
Impeccable reputation and 30 years of distinguished military service on the line, here was National Security Adviser HR McMaster yesterday, speaking about the WaPo story accusing our Dear Leader of divulging highly-classified information about ISIS to the Russian Defense Minister:
I have a brief statement for the record. There is nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation.
At no time, at no time, where intelligent sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the Secretary of the State, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Their on the record accounts should outweigh anonymous sources. I was in the room. It didn't happen. (Emphasis added)
To be clear, the Washington Post did not report that Dear Leader discussed ‘sources or methods’ or ‘military operations’. From their own story about this:
The Post did not say anything of the sort, but rather, accurately reported that Trump revealed highly classified material obtained from an ally — the disclosure of which would endanger our relationship with our ally and jeopardize the means by which we obtained the information.
This morning, our Dear Leader tweeted:
"As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety," Trump said on Twitter. "Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism."
HR McMaster just plain lied.
This isn’t a ‘Spicey lie’, which is when Dear Leader tells Sean Spicer something fabulous and he steps up to the podium to uncritically parrot it. It’s not even KellyAnne Conway’s ‘alternative facts’. HR McMaster was in the room, in the conversation. He was there.
At best, he was disingenuous by denying something that didn’t happen. This kind of lying is known at his alma mater, West Point, as quibbling, which is defined as ‘an instance of the use of ambiguous, prevaricating, or irrelevant language or arguments to evade a point at issue.”
That is important because when my dad was a West Point cadet, as well as when HR McMaster was at West Point, quibbling was a violation of the Honor Code, punishable by immediate expulsion. The West Point Honor Code is simple:
A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.
This matters. My dad lived his entire life by that code, and so has every other West Point graduate I have known.
I never would have believed that HR McMaster would actually drink the Kool-Aid, but he did.
Dear Leader doesn’t actually try to break things — he’s just a typical kid with self-control issues who likes to play with thing…. unfortunately he isn’t careful and lots of the stuff he plays with ends up getting broken.
It looks like HR McMaster got broken, thanks to little Donnie.