Name: Gen. H.R. McMaster on Working for Trump, Being Non-Partisan
Uploaded: 2022-01-13T18:06:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gen. H.R. McMaster on Working for Trump, Being Non-Partisan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-01-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gen. H.R. McMaster on Working for Trump, Being Non-Partisan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-01-13. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- So how does that work?
Like who, so a person like you
as a national security advisor, like in a general,
where, who comes to you with these ideas and plans?
- Well, it's your job to kind of convene
the, you know, the president's cabinet, right?
The principal's committee of the national security council.
And you know, Joe, you know, I write about this in the book.
I walked into that office really unexpectedly,
obviously, right?
You know, I had been walking down Walnut Street
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on my way to a think tank.
My job at the time was to design the future army.
So I'm an active duty Lieutenant General.
And I was gonna brief this think tank community,
get their thoughts on a study that we had commissioned,
almost a two year long study on Russia's annexation of Crimea
and invasion of Ukraine and Russian new generation warfare
and what it meant, right?
For developing the future army and the future military.
And my phone rings and it's a partially blocked number from,
you know, from the, you know, from the, from the,
from the White House.
- Oh boy.
- And they say, hey, uh, hey, the president would like you
to interview for the job of national security advisor
at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday.
- It says partially?
- So it just says 202, which is 202.
- That's it?
- That's it, yeah.
- Oh boy, that's some like Batman shit.
- So that's why, that's why I answered it.
Typically I wouldn't answer my phone on the way to a meeting,
but I like, maybe I ought to answer this one.
So, so, uh, you know, it came, that came out of the blue.
And so that was a Friday, right?
And Sunday I'm interviewing for the job.
- Wow.
- He hires me on, you know, president's day, Monday.
I fly back to Washington, right?
You know, on, on Air Force One.
- And you interviewed at Mar-a-Lago?
- At Mar-a-Lago.
- So you're having like shrimp cocktails.
- Hey, I didn't know how to get food there, man.
So what, so after, after the first interview, right?
They said, hey, the president would probably
like to talk to you again.
So I, I stayed, they kept me there for the rest of the day.
I went into the military aides office, you know,
cause I know, they'll know those guys
and we're on the military.
So I'm hanging out in their office.
I'm doing emails for my regular job.
And you know, of course calling my wife
and calling Katie and talking to her about it.
And, and there's, there's no food.
I don't know how to get food.
So I ate everything that those guys had.
I ate their pistachio nuts, man.
And I left them a note.
Hey, sorry guys, I have to replenish your supplies.
- You can't ask Trump.
Hey buddy, where's the man get a steak around here?
- I probably could have gotten some meatloaf or something.
- I'm sure. - I'm sure I could have.
Missed opportunity.
But, but so, so anyway, that, that one day I go,
I fly back to, to DC and I didn't even live in DC.
So they had these Osprey aircraft
waiting to take me back to my house
in, in, in Tidewater, Virginia.
I packed the bag and I started on Tuesday, man.
I mean, so, so it was quick, but I had this, you know,
I had this great gift that the army gave me,
which is the opportunity to study history, you know?
And, and, and so I walk into, to me, McGeorge Bundy's office, the guy who was
national security
advisor when Vietnam became an American war.
And I wrote a book called "Derelition of Duty" about how, why Vietnam became an
American war
and identified all of the deficiencies in the decision-making policymaking
process, right?
In, in, in Washington.
So I resolved at least, okay, I'm not going to make the same mistakes, right?
And, and so those, one of those mistakes for what you're alluding to is, you
know, they, they didn't spend enough time thinking about the nature of the
problem, right?
They didn't frame out the problem, use kind of design thinking to think about
it, right?
So when I came into the job, you know, we, we, you know, we established, you
know, what I thought were the top 16 challenges to our security and prosperity
in the world, right?
And, and then we organized a framing effort around those.
And we put together a meeting called a principal small group framing session
where the president's cabinet, right?
The secretary of state and defense and the, all the heads of the intelligence
community, you know, come together to, to, to really approve how we've
described the problem associated with Chinese Communist Party aggression, with
Russian aggression, with Iran and Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, with
North Korea and North Korea's nuclear program and, and, and, and other threats
from North Korea, threats that are, that are occurring more frequently and are
more consequential in cyberspace, for example.
And, and, and, and so I, as I came into the job, I was grateful for the
opportunity to study it from a historical perspective anyway.
Well, you're, you're famously nonpartisan.
You're, you're a guy who didn't even vote while you were in active duty.
You, you decided a long time ago that that was the best course of action to
stay completely unbiased and to concentrate entirely on the goals and
objectives of the military.
Right. Right. Right. So when you're with a guy like Trump, you're going to be
associated politically.
Like it's, if you're a part of the Trump administration, it's like you're
immediately associated with Trump and then with all of the good and the bad
that comes with that.
So what was that a shock to the system? Like, what was that like to go from,
you get this phone call from this weird number, all of a sudden you're in Mar-a-Lago
trying to find some food and then you're the national security advisor.
Well, you know, you know, I really think it was a benefit to stay on active
duty, you know, and, and, and I, I really think that, I mean, I, I know like
you do.
I, I, when I look at the polarization, our society today, this partisan
politics, I think, okay, why can't we just talk about what we can agree on?
So I think in the area of foreign policy, that ought to be an area where we
could agree, like who wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
Who wants the only hereditary communist dictatorship in the world, you know,
the Kim family regime in North Korea to have the most destructive weapons on
earth?
Who wants Russia to intimidate all the countries on its periphery, develop destabilizing
nuclear weapons, try to coerce us like they're doing now?
Who wants China to eat our lunch economically?
Okay, let's talk about that across partisan lines, right?
You shouldn't be partisan issues.
So I think Donald Trump was the fifth, the fifth commander in chief I served in
uniform, right?
When I took the oath of office at West Point, the oath at West Point as a, you
know, as a, as a plea there, you know, in, in, gosh, the summer of 1980, right?
Reagan was president, right?
So it didn't matter to me who the commander in chief was.
I was going to do my best to, to fulfill my oath, which was to, to support and
defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, right?
And to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, you know, and, and I felt
like I could serve Trump well by, you know, by helping him determine his agenda.
He's the guy that got elected, right?
And then, and then once he made decisions to help orchestrate the sensible
implementation of his decisions.
And that's the, that's the job I took on.
Thank you.