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Sources: McMaster Mocked Trump’s Intelligence At A Private Dinner

Posted on November 20, 2017, at 12:05 p.m.
Joseph Bernstein
BuzzFeed News Reporter

At dinner at a lobbying hotspot with a powerful tech CEO, the national security adviser said the president has the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” according to sources. Oracle and the Trump administration deny the comments.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster mocked President Trump’s intelligence at a private dinner with a powerful tech CEO, according to five sources with knowledge of the conversation.

Over a July dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz — who has been mentioned as a candidate for several potential administration jobs — McMaster bluntly trashed his boss, said the sources, four of whom told BuzzFeed News they heard about the exchange directly from Catz. The top national security official dismissed the president variously as an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” the sources said.

A sixth source who was not familiar with the details of the dinner told BuzzFeed News that McMaster had made similarly derogatory comments about Trump’s intelligence to him in private, including that the president lacked the necessary brainpower to understand the matters before the National Security Council.

Both Oracle and the Trump administration heatedly denied the comments that Catz later recounted.

“Actual participants in the dinner deny that General McMaster made any of the comments attributed to him by anonymous sources. Those false comments represent the diametric opposite of General McMaster's actual views,” said Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Oracle's top DC operative, who attended the dinner with Catz, also denied that McMaster made the comments his boss later recounted to others. The meeting, Oracle senior VP for government affairs Ken Glueck said, was about China, and “none of the statements attributed to General McMaster were said.” Glueck added that Catz “concurs entirely” with his account of the dinner.

Glueck responded to repeated inquiries only after BuzzFeed News contacted the NSC. And according to two sources with knowledge of the situation, administration officials threatened to retaliate against several figures with knowledge of the July dinner if they spoke to BuzzFeed News. Asked whether he had made his statement under pressure from the administration, Glueck responded, “ridiculous.”

Along with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, McMaster — a three-star general — is often seen as a moderating influence on the president and a steadying hand in an administration staffed with political newcomers and anti-establishment bomb-throwers. Because of their perceived influence over the president, both men and in particular McMaster are widely distrusted by Trump’s base and some loyalist aides and former staffers, and have been the perceived target of attacks in the press.

McMaster’s allegedly dismissive comments are the latest suggestion that at least some of Trump’s senior-most aides see their jobs as containing a president who isn’t up to the task. In October, NBC News and other outlets reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a “moron” in a July meeting at the Pentagon. Also in October, Republican Sen. Bob Corker told the New York Times that a group of senior administration officials have banded together to try to keep Trump under control.

News of the July dinner first surfaced in August, when Axios reported that Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson decided to support a campaign alleging that McMaster was anti-Israel after speaking with Catz about her meeting with the national security adviser. That decision stemmed, multiple sources tell BuzzFeed News, from comments McMaster made to Catz praising President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and describing Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as a major problem.

But these new details reveal that the subject matter of McMaster’s dinner with Catz, which sources tell BuzzFeed News took place on July 18 at the Washington, DC, restaurant Tosca, ranged far from geopolitics. Indeed, three of the sources said that McMaster disparaged multiple members of the administration to Catz, including Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. Of Kushner, one source told BuzzFeed News, McMaster said he had no business being in the White House and should not be involved in national security issues.

“[Catz] said the conversation was so inappropriate that it was jaw-dropping,” another source told BuzzFeed News.

The Israel-born Catz served on the executive committee of then-President-elect Trump’s transition team, and has been floated for numerous posts in the Trump administration, including US trade representative, director of national intelligence, and co-chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

While Catz hasn’t wound up in any of these jobs, Oracle has stayed closer to the Trump administration than many of the other high-profile tech giants. The company has a major presence in the nation’s capital, disclosing nearly $10 million in lobbying expenditures so far in 2017, more than Facebook.

Catz attended the July dinner at the F Street lobbyist hotspot with Glueck, who Recode described as one of the most powerful political operatives in Silicon Valley.

Catz, who has donated widely to both Republicans and Democrats, and McMaster, who has long been a target of the pro-Trump media and the nationalist wing of the administration for his mainstream positions on foreign policy and his purge of staffers hired by his predecessor, Michael Flynn, are both establishment figures. And yet, according to sources, Catz was so alarmed by the tenor of McMaster’s comments about President Trump and Israel that she confided her concerns to several administration officials, as well as Adelson.

Joe Bernstein is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. Bernstein reports on and writes about the gaming industry and web culture.
Contact Joseph Bernstein at joe.bernstein@buzzfeed.com.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein...6L1#.gpnDYkAj0z

On Buzzfeed by a guy who "writes about the gaming industry"... I won't say it's not true, but color me slightly skeptical.

The sentiments are probably true, I just find an "establishment figure" saying them out loud in public unlikely.

I'm skeptical of this as well, mainly due to the reporting and sourcing, but I was also skeptical that Tillerson called him a "moron" and that turned out to be true.

In your own mind.

Tillerson was given multiple opportunities to deny it, and passed them all up. He was asked point blank several times and refused to deny it. After that is when Trump threw his hissy fit challenging Tillerson to an "IQ contest".

So I guess as people ignore some of your "out there" posts it is an admission we won't deny them. Brilliant!

This is borderline gibberish. Let me try to decipher this barely literate sentence - are you trying to say that people who don't respond to my posts don't deny they exist?

And if so...I'm still unclear as to how that compares to a man refusing to say he didn't call his boss a "moron" when being asked point blank "did you call him a moron?" on several occasions.

Ignoring a stupid accusation is not the same as agreeing with it.

You are saying by ignoring the stupid question he admitted something.

You are not thinking or you are fooling yourself.

You truly do work in the Media if you can make an admission story out of someone saying nothing.

He'd lose that contest against a soap dish.

If someone asks you point blank "did you call your boss a moron?" and the answer isn't "no"...that's a yes.

And Trump threw a hissy fit and challenged Tillerson to an "IQ contest". Was Trump not thinking, or fooling himself?

And there you have it Folks! The Birth of FAKE NEWS!

If you look at the questioner who asks a ridiculous question, roll your eyes at him, and walk away, THAT'S A YES!

It's not a ridiculous question at all. Trump is quite clearly a moron. It's absolutely plausible that someone who works with him would call him a moron. Like I said, I viewed it with skepticism at first, but once Tillerson went out of his way to not deny it, that all but confirmed it.

Also, your characterization is an absolute lie, and you know it. Tillerson did nothing like you've described.

And again - you keep ignoring the fact that Trump clearly believed it to be true, as he filled his diaper and challenged Tillerson to an "IQ contest".

Finally, as always, considering that you fall for obvious nonsense a fifth grader wouldn't believe in a daily basis - Obama holding a military coup, Antifa supersoldiers plotting to behead all small business owners, Trump stopped a mugging but the police never showed up and he didn't want it to be publicized - maybe you should lay off on the whole "fake news" angle.

I've just never seen so many high positioned officials say the POTUS is a stupid. Fascinating.

I wish I could've been in the room when they had to tell him that they couldn't roll tanks and missiles down the D.C. streets at his inauguration.

so its not confirm. thank you.

I had this argument with swish yesterday, about what a gov stated. I wish I had the lefts superpowers to interpret words and read minds with absolute clarity and fact.

If somebody asked you on national television whether or not you called your boss a moron, would you refuse to answer the question?

1) Trump is an obvious moron

2) Tillerson is accused of calling Trump a moron

3) Tillerson refuses to deny calling Trump a moron.

Call it fact or opinion, but it seems fairly clear to me.

4) I call it FAKE NEWS!

I wouldn't refuse to.

I know, when I had a boss, he wasn't the president of the country, but he was the president of the company, and the owner.

I called him a moron many times. To his face.

Being self employed, I still call myself a moron - sometimes weekly.


What's the big "gotcha" moment if he did call Trump a moron?

I don't get it. Show me an employee that hasn't called their boss a moron at some point in time. THAT would be newsworthy.

Billionaire, leader of the free world, and you're here arguing with some guy on the internet in your mom's basement. yep, HES the moron.

Maybe, but there sure are a lot of reports from high level admin people and elected officials saying similar things.

So, yeah, this could very well be a FAKE News report. But there are question marks that persist.

I don't think there's any big "gotcha" to it. It just confirms what most people already know. If there's any "story" to it, it's a small and cheap solace for people to know that someone with a seat at the table isn't incompetent enough to believe in Trump or follow his guidance.

I'm reminded of the woman in the commercial posting things on her "wall" in her living room and the other woman saying, "That's not how this works. That's not how ANY of this works."

You don't have five sources.. you have ONE source who told 4 other people... Good God, when did decent journalism die?

I'm not saying it's true or not but... <smdh>