The Slatest

Report: H.R. McMaster, Like Rex Tillerson, Has Said Privately That Trump Is Real Dumb

H.R. McMaster and Donald Trump at the Bedminster National Golf Club in New Jersey on Aug. 10.

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Remember when NBC reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called Donald Trump a “fucking moron” during a meeting in which the president was not involved, triggering a process of escalating stupidity that culminated in Trump challenging Tillerson to an I.Q. test that sadly did not ever take place? Well, going by a report by BuzzFeed’s Joe Bernstein, it looks like national security adviser H.R. McMaster wanted a piece of that action:

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 National Security Council are denying BuzzFeed’s report. On the other hand … H.R. McMaster is a respected author who has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, and POTUS’ thoughts on geopolitics look like this:

BuzzFeed’s report is plausible.