Top advisor General H.R. McMaster remembers and comments on Donald Trump’s first overseas trip. A really interesting read.  T

The Free Press

H.R. McMaster: My Travels with Trump

‘I wished more Americans could understand the good, as well as the bad and the ugly, of the Trump presidency.’ The former U.S. National Security Adviser is the star of our next Book Club.

By H.R. McMaster

December 7, 2024

America needs sober, fair assessments of Donald Trump. There’s enough people demonizing the once and future president, and enough people idolizing him, too. But as we prepare for his return to the White House, we need people who see all sides of the president. People like H.R. McMaster.

McMaster served as National Security Adviser for roughly the first year of Trump’s presidency. He was, and remains, a military legend. McMaster served as a captain in the Gulf War, a colonel in the Iraq War, and a brigadier general in Iraq. While working for Trump, he remained on active duty as a lieutenant general. He’s earned a Silver Star, among a dozen other awards. He’s also a scholar and best-selling author, most recently of At War with Ourselves, an account of what he calls his “tour of duty” in the White House.

It’s no secret that we admire H.R. here at The Free Press. He’s appeared on Honestly twice—to speak about America’s failure in Afghanistan, and the possibility of nuclear escalation between Russia and Ukraine. But with the Middle East on the brink and his old boss coming back, his voice is more important than ever. So we’re incredibly excited to announce he will be the star of our next Free Press Book Club, hosted by Michael Moynihan in the retired general’s hometown of Philadelphia.

To understand why At War with Ourselves is an essential read, we’re running an excerpt, in which H.R. reveals the inside story of Trump’s first foreign tour as president—to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, the NATO headquarters in Brussels, and a G7 summit in Taormina, Italy. It is a rare insight into how Trump thinks about the world, how he makes decisions, and how he’s influenced by the people around him.

H.R. will be talking to Michael about all this, and more, on January 7 at Philly’s National Constitution Center. You can get tickets by clicking here—and we recommend booking early. (Our last Book Club, with Peggy Noonan, sold out in a couple of hours.) In the meantime, you can order At War with Ourselves today—and scroll down for our exclusive excerpt. —The Editors

Saudi Arabia

As Air Force One took off, I felt a sense of relief. I was happy to leave behind Washington for a while. Maybe the overseas trip would allow us to focus on the substance of foreign policy.

I shared the four-person office between the galley and the conference room with the president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn; his chief of staff, Reince Priebus; and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. They complained about the uncomfortable chairs that did not recline. I assured them that Air Force One was much more comfortable than the cargo aircraft I was used to taking to the Middle East. I learned on those flights that the key to getting rest was to stake out a comfortable spot on the floor.

President Trump was in a good mood when he popped into the office. He noted, as he often would on trips abroad, “General, you are always working.” And I gave what was becoming my standard answer: “Mr. President, that is what you hired me to do.”

Before dinner was served, I briefed the president and First Lady Melania Trump on the first three stops of what would be a nine-day odyssey.

The first stop, Saudi Arabia, had been a strategic partner since 1945. But it had also been the principal funder of mosques and schools that systematically taught an ideology that was a gateway to jihadist terrorism. ISIS was using Saudi textbooks to teach children to hate Jews as well as “infidels” and “rejectionists” who did not adhere to their extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam.

I advised Trump against getting involved in internal Saudi politics, especially the power struggle between the then-crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), and his cousin, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). One month later, MBN would be unseated and replaced by MBS, who remains crown prince to this day.

Kushner had a close relationship with MBS. I had my doubts, but I believed that Saudi Arabia was at a turning point. MBS had told the president when he visited Washington weeks earlier that his father, King Salman, now understood the danger of proselytizing hatred and intolerance. And the kingdom was deeply concerned about Iran’s intensification of its proxy wars in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

King Salman welcomed Trump and the First Lady at the foot of Air Force One. They walked together on a red carpet lined by a military honor guard. As our motorcade departed King Khalid International Airport, it was already clear that our hosts had pulled out all the stops. Billboards welcoming Trump with his smiling image lined the highway on the way to the Royal Court palace.

I thought to myself that they knew exactly how to win Trump’s favor.

As we turned onto the road leading to the palace gate, over a dozen horses flanked the presidential limousine, their riders carrying alternating American and Saudi flags. After a ceremony during which Saudi officials and U.S. heads of defense and other large companies signed letters of intent for over $110 billion in deals, we traveled to The Ritz-Carlton hotel to prepare for dinner.

That’s when we learned the billboards and the horses had been only a warm-up. As we turned down the hotel’s long driveway, laser lights lit up the building with alternating images of the American and Saudi flags and the faces of President Trump and King Salman. Although press reports dismissed the fanfare as the Saudis playing to Trump’s penchant for adulation, Saudi leaders were also signaling their desire to welcome the United States back after the estrangement of the Obama years.

After the dinner at the palace, I went to the president’s suite to hear his assessment and to summarize the next day’s activities. Trump seemed at home in the ornate, gilded hotel room packed with extravagant floral arrangements, fruit bowls, date trays, and plates of Middle Eastern sweets. The pageantry and the successful meetings seemed to have invigorated him.

Steve Bannon was engaged in his typical combination of sycophancy and agitation, alternating praise for the president with lamentations of how Trump was under assault from the press, the FBI, the deep state, and “globalists.” As Cohn and I tried to help Trump focus on the next day’s events, Bannon pulled Trump back into his preferred territory: the morass of partisan domestic politics. He must have recognized that his influence depended on Trump’s anxiety and sense of beleaguerment. I had begun to see Bannon as a brash yet fawning court jester who “entertained” the president with stories, mainly about those who were out to get him and what he could do to “counterpunch.”

I interrupted: “Mr. President, I thought I might give you and the team a quick reminder of the agenda for tomorrow.” Then I launched into the first of many quick briefings I would give him on the road.

“You will begin with something like speed dating as you meet with the leaders of Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, and Kuwait for just under 30 minutes each,” I began, before rattling off a few other commitments.

“You and the First Lady will attend the opening ceremony for the inaugural global summit on combating extremism,” I continued, referring to what came to be known as the Riyadh Summit. “Many of the 50 world leaders in attendance will want photos with you. I will escort Ashraf Ghani”—then president of Afghanistan—“and a few others over to you and then help you break contact and get to the greenroom to relax before your speech, which will be the first after King Salman’s. The speech will be historic. Yours, the king’s, and other key messages are mutually reinforcing.”

All went accordingly, but the majority of the media was so stuck on covering the administration as if it were a soap opera that the significance of the Saudi Arabia trip was apparent only in retrospect. The president’s messages promoting solidarity, peace, and humaneness among “people of the book”—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—were sowing seeds for what would become, years later, the Abraham Accords, an agreement that most experts thought impossible, especially under the Trump administration.

I wished that more Americans could see beyond their silos of cable news and vitriolic partisanship to understand more fully the good, as well as the bad and the ugly, of the Trump presidency.

Israel

Air Force One touched down in Israel at 12:15 on Monday, May 22, 2017, the date commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated a coalition of Arab nations and seized, among other territory, the eastern half of the city.

The welcoming ceremony was ornate. After walking the line of troops, the president and First Lady mounted a red carpeted stage equipped with a podium, alongside Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and their wives. Rivlin noted that Israel needed a strong United States and that the United States needed a strong Israel. Netanyahu referred to Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia and stated that Israel’s hand was extended to all its neighbors in peace. He noted that Trump had traveled from Riyadh to Tel Aviv and hoped that “one day an Israeli prime minister will be able to fly from Tel Aviv to Riyadh.”

After the ceremony, we moved to President Trump’s helicopters, which had been transported from the United States for the short 41-mile flight to Jerusalem. As we flew north, I pointed out what I had seen several times before, from Israel Defense Forces helicopters—Israel’s “narrow waist,” the mere 8.7 miles separating the Mediterranean Sea and the West Bank. Israelis view the West Bank, also occupied after the Six-Day War, as critical to their security, because it added 30 miles to their country’s “waist.” And after leaving the Gaza Strip in 2005, only to see Hamas turn that territory into a haven for a terrorist organization committed to destroying Israel and killing Jews, it was understandable that Israeli leaders were unwilling to end their security presence in the West Bank.

Trump was the first president to visit East Jerusalem, and he was doing so on the fiftieth anniversary of its annexation. I had been to Jerusalem several times before, but one cannot help but feel a strong sense of spirituality transcending day-to-day stresses. Those stresses seem small when the visitor realizes they are following in the footsteps of Jesus or King David. I had enjoyed the company of Cohn as we followed the president to each site. We knelt down to touch the Rock of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and we walked to the Western Wall together to tuck our prayer notes into its crevices. There, I asked God to give me the ability to do my duty and the fortitude to ignore or overcome the obstacles that might keep me from doing so.

Reporters and former officials with experience in the Middle East described Trump’s desire to broker the “deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians as naïve. But I thought that a touch of naïveté might be necessary to make progress on one of the longest-running and most complex conflicts in the world. When, nearly three weeks earlier, on May 3, Trump hosted the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, at the White House, he had caused consternation with the statement “I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like . . . I can live with either one.” He had used language consistent with a two-state solution, but he was very direct about the need for the Palestinian Authority to reform, and to contest the grip that the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had on Gaza and the inroads they were making into the West Bank. Trump had also begun to put pressure on Netanyahu by saying to many audiences that he did “not think Bibi wants to make a deal.” He was not wrong. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had legitimate concerns that a two-state solution would be unviable.

Over six years later, the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel would reveal that the viability of a two-state solution depended on ensuring that terrorists cannot control territory on Israel’s borders.

The morning after the visit to the Western Wall, I met Trump’s chief speechwriter Stephen Miller on my way to see the president.

Miller told me that the president had modified the language of a forthcoming speech—at the Palestinian Authority in Bethlehem—to describe the perpetrators of a horrible terrorist attack at England’s Manchester Arena as “losers.” The president had also, Miller said, made additions to a speech he would give later in the day, at Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, to announce that he had decided to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Finally, Miller informed me the president had seen a film last night at dinner that portrayed Palestinian leaders encouraging terrorist acts against Israelis. I thanked Miller for filling me in and went to see the president.

As I walked into his room, Trump asked me, “Do you like calling the terrorists ‘losers’?”

I responded, “I like it. It is an accurate description for people who murder innocents.”

Trump then told me about the film Netanyahu had shown him. I surmised from his description that it had spliced together footage of Abbas to make it appear that he had called for the murder of Israeli children.

I told Trump that Miller had mentioned that he might now announce the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. I asked him to reconsider that decision so he could hear from his cabinet first and to give us time to develop a plan to maximize the advantages of such a move and mitigate any negative consequences.

“Okay, General, you can take it out of the speeches.”

The motorcade moved quickly along the cleared roads for the short drive into the West Bank and on to Bethlehem. I rode with Trump. Policemen lined the entire route at intervals of between 20 and 50 yards. Trump stewed about the film from the night before. I assumed that Netanyahu had shown the film not just to undermine Trump’s relationship with Abbas, but also to prevent the president from pushing harder for a moratorium on new Israeli West Bank settlements or for a two-state solution unacceptable to the Netanyahu government.

In Bethlehem, Abbas waited for Trump at the Mukataa, the seat of Palestinian government, at the end of a red carpet with two children in biblical-era dress bearing flowers. A band and honor guard stood at attention as Abbas and Trump walked up the red carpet together. Anthems played. They walked into the Mukataa, to a receiving line of Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic clerics.

The rest of us went in through a side door, entered a square room, and sat in chairs across from the Palestinian delegation. I leaned over to Kushner and said, “I hope this meeting doesn’t blow up. It sounds like Netanyahu ran an operation on the president of the United States last night.”

From the outset of the meeting, it was clear the film screening had the desired effect. Trump had a compassionate side, and any abuse or harm to children incensed him. I had seen that side of him when he learned of the murder of children in Syria. His anger boiled over.

Now he accused Abbas and others in the room of murder. His tone and his words were threatening. Members of Abbas’s party, most of whom had attended the congenial meeting in the White House just two and a half weeks earlier, wore expressions of befuddlement and panic.

The bilateral meeting broke up, and a stunned Abbas walked with Trump across the courtyard to where both would make short statements. Trump, returning to the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena, offered his condolences to the families of the fallen, calling the terrorists “evil losers” who must be “driven out from our society forever.” On the prospects for enduring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he stated his desire to do “everything I can . . . to achieve a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.” Abbas also described the Manchester Arena murders as a “horrible terrorist attack.”

We departed Bethlehem and drove to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. It was my fourth visit, but I experienced again the same waves of emotion that had washed over me during my previous experiences there.

One enters the memorial and is immediately gripped by a sense of foreboding. It is Europe in the early 1930s. The floor slopes downward. Gray granite walls narrow toward the ceiling, squeezing out the light. One descends as humanity did when good men did nothing to stop the mass murder of Jews, prisoners of war, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. Moving forward, we see the Nazis begin to use gas vans. The visitor to Yad Vashem hits the bottom of a ramp as large shipments of German Jews begin on October 15, 1941.

My knees were weak from feelings of profound sorrow for those who suffered and for everything each condemned person might have experienced, and what they might have contributed to the world had they lived—weak, too, from the profound disappointment that man has the capacity for evil on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

The deep sorrow and foreboding one experiences in the first half of the museum allow no room for hope. It is when the U.S. Army, alongside British, Canadian, Free French, and Free Polish forces, crossed the English Channel in June 1944 that the floor at the Yad Vashem memorial begins to slope upward, toward sunlight streaming through the window at the far end of the memorial.

Everyone responds differently to a visit to Yad Vashem, and I wondered what Trump was feeling. The press roundly criticized his hasty inscription in the memorial guestbook, “It is a great honor to be here with all of my friends—so amazing and will never forget!” as remarkable for its “lack of gravity or deep reflection.”

His self-absorption and insecurities encumbered his ability to demonstrate his feelings, yet I hoped he felt not only the heavy weight of sadness as he descended the central walkway, but also that weight lifting as he ascended toward the light. I wanted him to see Yad Vashem as the most profound argument against those who would have the United States disengage from consequential competitions abroad, such as “the long war” against jihadist terrorists. Evil, if not confronted, only grows, inflicting unspeakable harm on humanity.

Trump’s speech after a moving ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance was heartfelt. He noted that the mass murderers of the Holocaust had to be stopped physically. He extolled the strength and resilience of the Jewish people and noted that “As long as we refuse to be silent in the face of evil, as long as we refuse to dim the light of truth in the midst of darkness, as long as we refuse to become bystanders to barbarity, then we know that goodness, peace, and justice will ultimately prevail.”

Rome

Hours after the final event in Israel, a speech at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, we arrived at Villa Taverna, the U.S. ambassador to Italy’s residence in Rome.

The next morning, I warned the president that it would be another long day for him and the First Lady, but a consequential one. For me, the first event of the day would be the experience of a lifetime. We would meet the pope.

I am Catholic. My sister, Letitia, and I attended an excellent Catholic elementary school, Norwood-Fontbonne Academy, in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, and our family had gone to Mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary every Sunday. But what had solidified my faith over the years were experiences in combat that were very difficult to explain except for divine Providence. I had borne witness to moral and physical evils that might have shaken anyone’s faith. But I had also seen good triumph over those evils in ways that only affirmed my belief in God.

We entered the pope’s study and, as instructed, lined up in front of high-backed armchairs facing one another. Pope Francis moved clockwise, silently taking each person’s hand in his hands. When he reached mine, he looked me in the eye, and said, “Please pray for me.” I smiled and responded, “Holy Father, I hope that you will pray for me.”

I felt a peculiar sense of calm and serenity. I saw in the pope’s countenance his understanding of the challenges I would face. In the coming months, I would reflect on this brief but powerful encounter and recall the first few lines of “The Serenity Prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Although Pope Francis and Trump had jousted in the media over the border wall, there was no discernible tension between them. The president’s gift to him, a box of signed first-edition books by Martin Luther King Jr., was appropriate and thoughtful. Pope Francis’s gift to Trump, signed copies of three documents, was pointed: the copy of Francis’s encyclical on climate change, Laudato sí, was clearly meant to challenge Trump’s skepticism on global warming. Trump promised to read it. I caught myself smiling, thinking, It’s a good thing Trump isn’t Catholic, or he’d have to go to confession for that lie.

We departed the Vatican for the short drive to the Quirinal Palace, where Trump was to meet with Italian president Sergio Mattarella. If Trump had experienced inner peace while visiting the Vatican, it was wearing off. He found it difficult to understand why he was meeting with President Mattarella rather than with Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, whom he had met in Washington on April 20. The pace of events and what he regarded as a superfluous meeting had made him cranky. After the meeting with Mattarella, I rode with him and Jared on the way back to Villa Taverna, where Trump was scheduled to meet with Gentiloni. He was getting tired and angry. He turned toward Jared and me in the far back and said, “How long is this fucking trip? Whose idea was this?”

I smiled and said, “It was Jared’s idea, Mr. President,” which prompted a smile from Jared and a scowl from Trump.

Brussels

The next leg of the trip concerned me the most. Candidate Trump had called Brussels a “hellhole”; had celebrated Brexit, predicting that more countries would follow the United Kingdom’s lead and depart the European Union; and had said the NATO alliance was “obsolete,” not only pointing out (as other American leaders had done) that many member nations were free riding on U.S. defense, but also suggesting that the United States might not come to the aid of NATO allies if they were attacked.

Trump was right that many countries were not fulfilling their pledge to invest at least 2 percent in defense. But, I told him, Russia wanted nothing more than to divide NATO and the EU countries and fragment the most successful military alliance in history. On the short flight to Brussels, I suggested to Trump that he press hard to get NATO nations to increase defense spending while not giving Russian president Vladimir Putin what he wanted. Cohn gave the president similar advice on trade: to demand changes to unfair economic practices that disadvantaged American companies and workers, but not to advocate for the disintegration of the European Union. We told Trump that divisions in the transatlantic relationship were good not only for Putin, but also for the country that posed the largest economic challenge to the United States—China.

I grew more concerned as we drew closer to Brussels. Watching the news on the flight had put Trump in a bad mood. Being away from home for a long stretch of time, combined with the constant drumbeat of Russiagate coverage, had made him anxious. Ex-CIA director John Brennan had just testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Priebus and Bannon, who advanced their influence through cultivating a bunker mentality and portraying themselves as his most loyal defenders, only stoked Trump’s anxiety. I told Cohn that I was concerned. Trump needed to lash out—and he might do so against NATO and the European Union in a way that would be a boon to our adversaries.

The next morning’s meetings with the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council—Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, respectively—were benign mainly because Trump and the EU leaders talked past one another. Trump and European Council president Tusk agreed that Russian gas pipelines to Europe were problematic because they fed the Kremlin’s ATM and gave Putin coercive power.

The meetings were cordial, but most of the press viewed Trump exclusively through the lens of his brash persona, misinterpreting body language and minor comments as indicators of major tensions. Reports on his meetings had become formulaic: Trump was rude and destructive to relationships.

Next up: the NATO summit itself.

In a room on the second floor of the U.S. ambassador’s residence, I sat next to the president at a round table for a final preparation session. Trump, who would give a speech to dedicate the 9/11 memorial at the new NATO Headquarters, wanted to threaten to pull out of NATO if member nations did not “pay their dues” and “pay arrears” for past underpayments to the organization.

I tried to explain—as I had many times before—that the commitment was for NATO nations to spend at least the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP on their own defense capabilities. Talk of “dues” and “arrears” to NATO would only confuse leaders, rather than put pressure on them to own up to their commitments. I tried not to sound exasperated. “Mr. President, the best way to make your point is not for the United States to threaten to renege on its obligation, which would weaken the alliance’s ability to deter Russia or other hostile actors, but to get others to live up to theirs.”

Businessman Trump thought it logical to condition fulfillment of the treaty obligation under Article 5, to treat “an attack on one as an attack on all,” on whether the attacked country had met its pledge to invest at least the equivalent of 2 percent of its gross domestic product in defense.

I pointed out: “Vacillating on Article 5 while standing in front of a remnant of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at a ceremony commemorating the only time the alliance evoked Article 5 after that mass murder attack on your hometown would not be a good look.”

Trump relented and went to his quarters to rest before we departed. Later, as I was packing up for the drive to NATO headquarters, Miller came to me. He had just been with the president, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was bearing bad news. He started with “I swear I had nothing to do with this. The president called me in and dictated some changes to the speech.”

Trump had excised a sentence affirming the United States’ commitment to Article 5 of the treaty. I was not worried about that—NATO leaders should not be expected to affirm their intention to uphold a treaty to which they are signatories every time they speak. More concerning, though, was new language in the speech: Trump had followed through on demanding that NATO countries pay “arrears” in their “dues” to NATO. Much worse, he had added that the United States would not be obligated to come to the defense of countries that were “delinquent” in their “payments.”

Miller gave me the news as he departed for NATO Headquarters to load the speech into the teleprompter. I met Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis at the top of the residence’s marble staircase. I needed their help. “Let’s all ride with the president, so we can explain why that language is offensive and counterproductive.”

Mattis replied as we stepped outside: “H.R., I think you can convince him. I’m going to ride with Rex.”

I responded, “Would both of you please get in the fucking car?”

They acceded.

On the short drive from the ambassador’s residence to NATO Headquarters, I told Trump that the reaction to his comments would focus exclusively on his threat of withdrawal from NATO and not on members’ failure to meet their obligations. Tillerson and Mattis reinforced this point. Finally, about halfway into our 20-minute drive, Trump said, “Okay, okay, you can take it out, General.”

With the issue resolved, I called Stephen Miller, to tell him to delete the new language from the teleprompter. He made the change just prior to the president’s arrival at NATO Headquarters.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg met us out in front, and walked us through the brand-new building complex to the greenroom. He thought that Trump would be impressed, and he was—just not in the way Stoltenberg had hoped. Trump said something about the stupidity and cost of the new building, observing that “one bomb would take out the whole thing.” He was right. The new headquarters symbolized the overconfidence of the post–Cold War period.

I exited the building and walked past the 9/11 memorial and the podiums to the U.S. seating area, where I joined Cohn to listen to the president’s statement.

Later, members of the media criticized Trump for omitting the explicit pledge to adhere to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. The Washington Post decried his comments on burden-sharing as “confrontational, nationalist rhetoric.” But Trump had made the points he wanted to make on burden-sharing without emboldening adversaries or creating cracks in the alliance that the Kremlin could easily exploit.

Sicily

The travel team was pared down. With Bannon and Priebus gone, Cohn and I would staff the president for the G7 in Sicily, with a much smaller group.

We landed at Naval Air Station Sigonella and jumped into the convoy for the scenic 48-mile drive to the coastal town of Taormina. When I got to my hotel room, I found it had a beautiful view of the bay, the setting sun illuminated colorful buildings that rose from the harbor in tiers anchored into the steep slope of Mount Etna. I couldn’t help but think that living at the base of an active volcano was an apt metaphor for serving in the Trump White House.

Early the next morning, Cohn and I met the president in his quarters. Trump was in a good mood. We summarized the key points Trump might consider making during the roundtable discussions with Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Shinzo Abe, Gentiloni, Justin Trudeau, and Theresa May. The president noted that this leg of the trip “seemed a lot easier.”

On the way out, I said to Cohn, “It does seem a lot easier, and he is in a much better mood.”

Cohn replied, “Consider who is not here.”

We were experiencing the absence of Priebus and Bannon agitating Trump.

We made the short drive to the beautiful San Domenico Palace hotel. The seven leaders sat at a circular table with a single adviser seated at tables behind them; Cohn was in the room for the economic discussion, and I joined Trump for the foreign policy and security discussions.

That night, during a stop for gelato on our walk back to the hotel after dinner, my phone rang. It was National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg. Priebus and Bannon, having returned early to Washington, had apparently decided that with Cohn and me in Sicily, it was time to try again to effect a purge of NSC staff. I returned to my hotel room to make the first of several phone calls. I was angry because of the blatant violation of trust and frustrated that Bannon and Priebus were more concerned about sabotaging the organization that was actually delivering for the president than in advancing his agenda and the interests of the people who had elected him.

I succeeded in blocking another attempt at a baseless mass firing, but I wondered how much longer it would be before the next attempt. The wolves were always circling, and my absence from Washington had given them another opportunity.

The next morning, the president would address American servicemen and -women and their families before leaving on Air Force One. I worked with Miller to ensure that the speech summarized the purpose and accomplishments of the trip. I also hoped it would help Trump understand better how he could advance his agenda through effective presidential diplomacy and that Cohn’s and my teams were helping him do so.

Melania introduced the president to those gathered. She described the nine-day trip as a “home run.” I agreed with her assessment.

On Air Force One, Cohn and I met with our teams to discuss how to keep the momentum from the trip going. Someone suggested that the two of us author a joint op-ed, so we went to work on an outline and asked our teams for suggestions. The May 30 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal stated that the “world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” We wrote that “America First” did not mean “America Alone” and that the Trump administration was committed to “protecting and advancing [U.S.] interests while also fostering cooperation and strengthening relationships with allies and partners.”

The reaction to the op-ed demonstrated that Cohn and I occupied the space between Trump’s virulent base of neo-isolationists and those who hated Trump and saw him as the greatest threat to their idealized international order. Some in the latter category wrote rebuttals that were hysterical in tone and full of ad hominem attacks. Others clung to Russiagate and claimed that all the administration’s efforts, even the op-ed, “have no standing.” Cohn and I were not surprised that serving in the Trump administration subjected us to the vitriol associated with America’s severe polarization.

The trip overseas was a success, but everything was much harder than it should have been. I thought of what the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz had said about the friction of war: “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” Fighting a war, he noted, was “like movement in a resistant element.” In battle, the enemy is the principal cause of friction. But in the Trump White House, as in American society, we were at war with ourselves. The “circular firing squad” in the White House both reflected and reinforced the us-versus-them mentality in U.S. politics and society.

H. R. McMaster, a retired lieutenant general, served as the United States national security adviser from 2017 to 2018. Read his last piece, “America’s Weakness Is a Provocation.”

This is an edited excerpt from At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House by H.R. McMaster. Copyright ©2024 by H.R. McMaster. Published with permission from Harper Books and HarperCollins Publishers.

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