'At War with Ourselves' and 'Broken Open' are memoirs chronicling internal conflict

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

New memoirs by former National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and recovery advocate William Cope Moyers document conflicts of different kinds. In At War with Ourselves, McMaster contends with his years in the Trump administration and the political infighting he experienced at the White House. Moyers' Broken Open documents a more personal struggle with maintaining his sobriety 35 years into his recovery journey. In today's episode, McMaster talks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the three types of people he encountered at the White House–and what U.S. foreign policy would look like under a second Trump presidency. Later, Moyers speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about what happens when sobriety is jeopardized.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's M here's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Writing a memoir, if you're honest, if you're
0:07.6	serious about the process, can be a way to really come to terms with your own faults. And the writers
0:13.9	of the two memoirs we've got for you today do that to varying degrees. In a bit, we'll hear a memoir
0:19.3	about the struggles of sobriety, not getting sober,
0:22.6	but staying sober, even after decades of sobriety under your belt. But first, H.R. McMaster
0:28.4	was a national security advisor to former President Trump, and he's got a memoir out now titled
0:33.8	At War With Ourselves about his time in the Trump administration.
0:43.0	He spoke with the NPR Steve Inskeep and talked about being at times overly confident in his abilities as a statesman to work with other people and accomplish common goals.
0:47.7	And when he says that, he's not talking about foreign entities or even people on the other
0:52.6	side of the aisle, but about other people in Trump's orbit.
0:57.1	That's coming up.
0:59.2	General H.R. McMaster is a soldier and a scholar. He's served in war zones and in archives.
1:05.1	Now he's written a book called at War with Ourselves, a memoir of his experience in America's toxic politics.
1:11.6	It's undermining our ability to be effective, even in areas of foreign policy and in national
1:16.7	security. Was the president you served a significant part of making that problem worse?
1:22.5	Oh, of course he was. Yes, yes. But oftentimes, the reaction to him is even worse. McMaster served as national security
1:30.3	advisor for President Trump. His memoir arrives just as Trump seeks to return to power. In McMaster's
1:36.5	telling the Trump administration accomplished more on foreign policy than its critics might admit.
1:41.8	But Trump himself was manipulated by AIDS at home and dictators abroad.
1:47.2	McMaster says his service in Iraq and Afghanistan led him to take the offer to work for Trump.
1:51.5	I had been on the receiving end of policies and strategies developed in Washington that made no sense to me when I was in places like Baghdad or Kabul. So I saw it as an opportunity
2:02.9	to help a disruptive president disrupt a lot of what needed to be disrupted in the area of
	...

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