It sounds like house cleaning at the White House is underway.

Empowered by a new chief of staff and goosed [intentionally trolling a Swill poster?] by a president angry with a perceived lack of creativity, National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is sweeping out some of the White House’s most fervent ideologues.
But McMaster has to move fast, senior administration officials tell The Daily Beast. Because the hardline nationalists at the core of Trump’s political base have declared war on the president’s top national security aide. His own role is by no means secure.

“The president hasn’t liked the plans he’s been presented on Iran, Afghanistan, or ISIS,” one of the officials told The Daily Beast. “The process hasn’t worked like it should,” to produce the innovative plans President Donald Trump tasked his team with crafting—plans that look different from what the Obama administration, or even the Bush administration, tried before.

So McMaster has been removing anyone on his team who either obstructed his own vision or had trouble rallying the other agencies around particular policy, like NSC intelligence director Ezra Cohen Watnick, who was let go on Wednesday. The officials said he’d had a “rough start” with McMaster as the two didn’t see eye to eye on some aspects of Mideast policy, and Cohen Watnick—a holdover hired by now-resigned National Security Adviser Michael Flynn—was blamed for anti-McMaster leaks to the media. The former DIA analyst was also openly criticized by CIA officers who saw the 31-year-old as inexperienced, which didn’t help him win over the powerful agency. Cohen Watnick was unable to reached for comment.

McMaster has also removed anyone who was directly responsible for the plans that most frustrated Trump, like senior Mideast adviser to the president and retired Col. Derek Harvey. Harvey himself was hawkish on Iran, but other agencies contributing to the discussion were reluctant to embrace any action that might draw the U.S. into a shooting war with Tehran. Harvey did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Last month McMaster also fired Rich Higgins, an official in the NSC’s strategic planning office, after he penned and circulated a controversial memo alleging a conspiracy by “Islamists” and “cultural Marxists” to undermine the Trump administration. Higgins did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

But McMaster’s show of force has set off alarm bells among Bannon allies in the pro-Trump media sphere, who favored Flynn and regard the national-security adviser as a globalist interloper. Other White House officials have in the past been targets of theirs—Priebus was, for example—but the vitriol against McMaster has been notable for its speed and intensity.

It’s come from all corners. Breitbart News, the website Bannon controlled as executive chairman before joining the Trump campaign, has produced a flurry of negative stories about McMaster over the past two days, accusing him of “purging” dissenters and kowtowing to “holdovers” from the Obama administration. Fox News host Sean Hannity has tweeted about McMaster, saying he might need to go. Radio host Laura Ingraham has also weighed in, tweeting that “Obama holdovers at NSC or State Dept who are leaking shd do real time for these leaks. Why has McMasters fired actual Trump supporters?” The Daily Caller published an interview with two former NSC officials attacking him, accusing him of undermining the president’s foreign-policy agenda. Circa, a site owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting company, published a letter Thursday that McMaster sent months ago to his predecessor Susan Rice, in which he informed her that she could keep her security clearance. It’s a standard letter, but it has caused a furor in light of the ongoing controversy over unmasking.

The provocative right-wing blogger and activist Mike Cernovich has launched a sustained attack on McMaster, including setting up a website called McMasterLeaks.com. When it launched, the main page displayed a large cartoon of the Rothschilds controlling a George Soros puppet, which in turn controlled puppets representing McMaster and former CIA director David Petraeus. (The hand labeled “Rothschilds” has since been relabeled “Saudis.” Cernovich told me he changed it because complaints about the cartoon’s anti-Semitism are “not a hill to die on,” and “if everybody wants to complain, then fine—I’ll just put the Saudis at the top.”)