On July 25, the president agan berated McMaster. He had no interest in allies, Trump said. He didn't want any troops in South Korea even when reminded about the differential between the seven seconds to detect an ICBM launch from there as opposed to a 15 minute detection from Alaska.

On the colonnade outside the Oval Office, McMaster spoke with [Gary] Cohn and [Rob] Porter.

McMaster said that at 6:03 a.m., Trump had tweeted: "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign--'quietly working to boost Clinton.' So where is the investigation A.G. [attorney general]"

It was clearly Russian propaganda, McMaster said. He and the NSC and intelligence experts had concluded that. But the president had picked it up and shot it out.

McMaster said he wasn't sure how long he could stay.

In the Oval Office later that day, McMaster had a sensitive order he wanted the president to sign related to Libya.

I'm not going to sign it, Trump said. The United States should be getting oil. The generals aren't sufficiently focused on getting or making money. They don't understand what our objectives should be and they have the United States engaged in all the wrong ways.

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump's second national security adviser, considered Secretary of Defense Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson "the team of two" and found himself outside their orbit. He believed Mattis and Tillerson had concluded that the president and the White House were crazy. They sought to implement and even formulate policy on their own without interference or involvement from McMaster, let alone the president. "It's more loyal to the president," McMaster said, "to try to persuade rather than circumvent."