Total chaos as Donald Trump’s White House now claims H.R. McMaster has not been fired

Two hours ago, Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was out of a job. Now he’s… back? Never left? We’re not sure what’s going on, but we know that the Washington Post doesn’t make up stories like this, and yet Trump’s White House is now insisting that the WaPo did in fact make up this story. So what’s really going on? Does McMaster, or anyone else, still have a job?

This evening the WaPo published a story which opened with this sentence: “President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans.” There’s not a lot of wiggle room about what that meant. But just now, Trump’s Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted this: “Just spoke to [Trump] and Gen. H.R. McMaster – contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the [National Security Council].” Wait, what?

Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have a consistent track record for lying, so we place no weight on the claims they’re making about this. It’s worth pointing out that the Trump White House has made a significant effort out of denying similar reports about other top officials, who were then fired as well. So there are only three plausible explanations here.

The first is that Donald Trump made the decision, told everyone in his inner circle about it, and then erratically changed his mind. The second is that Trump really is planning to fire H.R. McMaster, and the chaotic Trump White House can’t even communicate well enough internally to get the story straight. The third is that the Trump White House purposely made up the story of McMaster’s firing and fed it to the WaPo, just so it could pull the rug out and make the newspaper look bad. We wouldn’t put any of the above past Trump’s hot circle of garbage of an administration.