Yet the effort to promote nuclear sales persisted, led by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

“The president thinks he can be friends with Putin,” former national security adviser H.R. McMaster complained during his time in the White House, according to U.S. officials. “I don’t know why, or why he would want to be.”

Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion

"The Kremlin's confidence is growing," he continued. "Russia has used old and new forms of aggression to undermine our open societies."

...kept in a state of perpetual limbo about his future in the administration, aware that his unpredictable boss could keep him around indefinitely or terminate him at a moment’s notice.

And the purge at the top may not be over. Mr. Trump, who is famously fickle, appears to have soured on additional members of his senior leadership team — and his frequent mulling about making changes has some people around him convinced that he could act soon.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up

Their strained relationship was on rare public display over the weekend when the president chastised his national security adviser for telling a crowd at the Munich Security Conference that evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”

“As you can see with FBI indictment, the evidence is incontrovertible and available in the public domain”

The top national security official dismissed the president variously as an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” the sources said. ... Both Oracle and the Trump administration heatedly denied the comments

Of course it did.

The chief White House strategist is increasingly isolated in the West Wing as new chief of staff John Kelly tries to clamp down on negative news stories.

“Very few people know who’s going to get axed next, but if you’re viewed as a Flynnstone it’s a liability”

McMaster has angered the political right by pushing out several conservatives on the national security staff and cautioning against ripping up the nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama without a strategy for what comes next.

The latest to go was Ezra Cohen-Watnick

A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda.

As rival factions inside the White House continue to battle over urgent foreign policy decisions, a key ally of Donald Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon is leaving the National Security Council

Excerpts from President Donald Trump’s speech ... do not include the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” a phrase that is considered offensive to Muslims and that McMaster has been trying — and failing — to delete from the president’s vocabulary for months.

"It can be difficult to advise the President effectively given his seemingly short attention span and propensity to be easily distracted"

...the administration would like “to take action short of armed conflict, so we can avoid the worst.”

The cruise missile attack on Syria capped off a week in which McMaster appeared to consolidate his power by ousting chief White House counselor Stephen Bannon from the National Security Council

The restructuring reflects the growing influence of national security adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army three-star general who took over the post after retired general Michael Flynn was ousted in February

In tapping McMaster, Trump turned to a widely respected and fiercely outspoken military strategist who was recognized for his battlefield leadership during both the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.