Trump picks hawk Bolton as top security aide
National security shakeup comes as US president is increasingly shedding advisers
Charging ahead with the dramatic remaking of his White House, President Donald Trump said he would replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster with the former UN Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk entering an administration facing key decisions on Iran and North Korea.
Bolton has vigorously opposed the nuclear deal. Before it was signed in 2015, he suggested bombing Iran to quash its nuclear ambitions.
Charging ahead with the dramatic remaking of his White House, President Donald Trump said he would replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster with the former UN Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk entering an administration facing key decisions on Iran and North Korea.
After weeks of speculation about McMaster’s future, Trump and the respected three-star general put a positive face on the Thursday departure, making no reference to the growing public friction between them. Trump tweeted that McMaster had done “an outstanding job & will always remain my friend.”
Hard-line influence
He said Bolton will take over April 9 as his third national security adviser in just over a year. The national security shakeup comes as the president is increasingly shedding advisers who once eased the Republican establishment’s concerns about the foreign policy and political novice in the White House.
McMaster is the sixth close adviser or aide to announce a departure in a turbulent six weeks, joining ally Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was unceremoniously fired last week.
The White House has said the president is seeking to put new foreign policy leaders in place ahead of a not-yet-scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Bolton is likely to add a hard-line influence on those talks, as well as deliberations over whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
The White House said McMaster’s exit had been under discussion for some time and stressed it was not due to any one incident, including this week’s stunning leak about Trump’s recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. McMaster had briefed Trump before the Putin call — and his team drafted all-caps instructions telling Trump not to congratulate the Russian leader on his re-election victory. Trump did it anyway.
An internal investigation into the leak is underway, said a White House official who requested anonymity.