Donald Trump just lost H.R. McMaster
Donald Trump is in search of anyone who’s willing to share the brunt of his Ukraine whistleblower scandal. He keeps trying to scapegoat Mike Pence. He briefly tried disavowing Rudy Giuliani this past weekend before remembering that Rudy knows where the proverbial bodies are buried. But no one seems to be the one to take the fall – and now Trump’s people are rapidly disavowing themselves of his mess.
First came the news this weekend that U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland was not only planning to testify to the House impeachment inquiry, he was planning to tell them that he was merely quoting Trump when he said in a text message that there was no quid pro quo – and that he has no idea if Trump was telling the truth. Okay, so much for Sondland taking the fall. Then Trump’s new Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced yesterday that he’s ordered the Pentagon to fully cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
But the biggest blow of the weekend may have come from Trump’s former National Security Adviser, General H.R. McMaster. Multiple former people in the Trump administration are now asserting to the media that McMaster had no involvement with, or knowledge of, the scheme to improperly stash the records of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders on a classified server.
What Donald Trump was hoping H.R. McMaster would say was ‘Yep, I’m the one who implemented the classified server protocol, and there was nothing improper about it.’ Instead, what McMaster is saying is ‘Don’t look at me, I wasn’t involved in that scandal and coverup.’ General McMaster is making clear that he has no interest in protecting Trump, at a time when Trump is running out of potential scapegoats.
