Ex-Adviser Says Putin Played on Trump’s Ego and Insecurities

Former President Donald Trump ’s one-time National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster wrote in his new book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, obtained by The Guardian , that Russian President Vladimir Putin tantalized Trump by preying on his “ego and insecurities.”

The book, which details McMaster’s time in the Trump White House, comes out on Aug. 27.

“This is nothing more than fake news intended to use made-up, salacious fabrications in order to sell copies of a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said of the book in a statement emailed to the Daily Beast.

In the midst of former spy Sergei Skripal’s poisoning in London, McMaster claimed that Trump wrote a love-letter to Putin along with a copy of a New York Post article entitled Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics, instructing McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin.”

“Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator,” as described by McMaster, “played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” claiming that “Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack.”

Trump reportedly also told former British Prime Minister, Theresa May , that he was “not sure” whether Putin was behind the poisoning in 2019. However, Trump did impose new sanctions on Russia following the attack.

“Putin had described Trump as ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt’ and Trump had revealed his vulnerability to this approach,” McMaster wrote. “His affinity for strongmen, and his belief that he alone could forge a good relationship with Putin.”

McMaster added that “Trump was overconfident in his ability to improve relations with the dictator in the Kremlin” in the same breath, saying former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had also suffered Trump’s Achilles heel.

Bush notably said of Putin in 2001 , “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.”

Bush’s relationship with Putin soured in 2008 when Putin invaded South Ossetia, a region of Georgia.

McMaster added that Trump was consumed by the Mueller report, which made “discussions of Putin and Russia were difficult to have.”

“The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated for a tough approach to the Kremlin seemed only to drive the president to the opposite approach,” McMaster wrote.

Read more at The Daily Beast.