President Donald Trump shakes hands with Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Feb. 20. | AP Photo Trump picks Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be national security adviser McMaster replaces Michael Flynn, who was asked to resign after misleading Mike Pence about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador about sanctions.

President Donald Trump named Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster on Monday as his national security adviser, calling the Army strategist “a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience.”

McMaster will replace Michael Flynn, who was asked to resign after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States about U.S. sanctions. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as acting NSA after Flynn’s departure, will remain on the National Security Council as chief of staff.


Trump, seated with McMaster and Kellogg on a couch at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort , said “that combination is very, very special.”

In brief remarks, McMaster thanked Trump for the opportunity to serve. Kellogg echoed the gratitude, saying he was honored to serve alongside McMaster, who he called “a great statesman, a great soldier.”

“This is a great team,” Trump said. “Our country is lucky to have two people like this.”

Trump’s first choice for the job, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, turned down the offer last Thursday. That left the White House scrambling to build a list of potential replacements. Gen. David Petraeus took himself out of consideration over concerns that he wouldn't have full authority to hire his own staff.

McMaster wasn't on the White House’s radar for the job until Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), increasingly a trusted foreign policy voice within the White House, called Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus early last week and urged them to consider the former combat general, who served in both Iraq wars and in Afghanistan. Cotton's staffers then helped facilitate contact between McMaster and the White House. On Thursday, Cotton received word in a text message from one senior White House staffer that McMaster was on the short list.





The senator, a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has long admired the general from afar, according to a source close to Cotton. He even submitted his resignation papers to the Army in 2007 partly because they passed over H.R. McMaster for a promotion to 1-star general, this person said. (Cotton later rescinded the resignation to deploy to Afghanistan.)

McMaster flew to Florida and met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where his appointment was officially announced Monday afternoon. He flew back to Washington with the president on Air Force One on Monday evening.

Cotton, meanwhile, received a text message from Kushner thanking him for putting McMaster on their radar and stating that "he's going to be a great choice," a source familiar with the process said.

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday that Trump "gave full authority for McMaster, who will remain on active duty while serving as national security adviser, to hire whatever staff he sees fit,” according to a pool report.

He will be the third national security adviser on active duty, following in the footsteps of Brett Scowcroft, who served under President Gerald Ford, and Colin Powell, who was President Ronald Reagan's NSA.

McMaster's appointment came as a relief to a number of the GOP's foreign policy hawks who have been alarmed by Trump's warm words toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin. In his current position as director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, McMaster has been tasked with developing a long-term strategy for the Army and has focused specifically on how the U.S. can counter Russian tactics, including a heavy reliance on cyberattacks, that have enabled its incursions in Ukraine.

Michael McFaul, the former Russia ambassador under President Obama, said McMaster was due to present his findings from a study on European deterrence toward Russia at a seminar next month at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

"Nothing that I've known from our past interactions would lead me to believe that he is soft on Russia," McFaul said. "My prediction is that he and Mattis will agree on a lot of aspects of this policy towards Russia."

McMaster, McFaul predicted, might be more likely to clash with Bannon and others in the White House who view counterterrorism through a messianic lens as a war with radical Islamic fundamentalism.

"H.R. has fought in Iraq and understands the virtues of cultivating local — that is, Muslim — allies," McFaul said.

"He is one of the most respected military strategists of the last 20 years — a thinker and a doer. In that sense, he is reputationally the polar opposite of Flynn, and will be a much better fit with the non-ideological, technocratic team of [Jim] Mattis, [Rex] Tillerson and [John} Kelly," said Derek Chollet, counselor at The German Marshall Fund of the United States who served in the Obama administration. "But he has scant experience with the interagency process of the inner workings of policy-making, so will have a considerable learning curve there."

A former National Security Council member who served during the Obama administration offered McMaster some advice.

"He'll have to focus on two things right away: establishing a clear interagency policy process to address the dysfunction of the past month and leading a deeply demoralized NSC staff to stem the flight of quality people from this White House," said Prem Kumar.

Another NSC official sounded a note of warning,

"Ensuring all voices, especially those that provide the counter argument, is essential to an effective organization. The more you try to squelch out dissent within the structure, the louder it will be voiced outside of the official process, which ultimately hurts your ability to effect change," said one NSC official who served during Obama's administration.

Nahal Toosi contributed reporting for this story.