The departure of national security adviser H.R. McMaster and his replacement by former U.N. ambassador John Bolton are both significant and welcome.  Bolton will be a team player on Team Trump and not someone with his own agenda who seeks the advice and counsel of those trying to undermine the Trump administration.

Leaks such as the one of the memo warning President Trump not to congratulate Vladimir Putin on Putin's re-election will undoubtedly stop, as McMaster and his staff were viewed as the source for many of them.

The White House national security team, already facing calls for the ouster of top adviser H.R. McMaster, was tagged by a key lawmaker with leaking confidential notes ordering President Trump not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin for his election win.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a conservative leader and foreign policy expert, expressed outrage at the leak and suggested that it and others thought to come from the national security council are crimes[.] ...

Meadows said that since it dealt with a foreign leader, the leak "had to" come from the president's national security staff, headed by McMaster.

It is no mystery why former national security adviser general Michael Flynn was unmasked by the Deep State and became the early target of a series of illegal leaks targeting Team Trump.  Flynn was an unabashed critic of President Barack Hussein Obama and someone who would take a bullet for Trump in any political battle.  The Deep State had no use for someone like Flynn and preferred someone less loyal to Trump and more accommodating to the "resistance" put in his place.  That man was to be H.R. McMaster, and the story of how he got to be President Trump's national security adviser speaks volumes about his true loyalties.

As Israeli journalist Caroline Glick notes in a recent article:

[T]here is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place.  Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago [sic] for a half an hour.  He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.

And who recommended McMaster?  You won't believe this.

Senator John McCain.  That's right.  The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.

Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain.  I mean what will he do?  Vote for Obamacare?

President Trump has expressed his continued support for McMaster, even after a letter McMaster sent to Benghazi liar and serial unmasker Susan Rice was revealed in which McMaster said he was perfectly fine with a person who should be a target of her very own special prosecutor retaining her security clearance.  As Fox News Politics reported on August 5:

Trump issued a statement late Friday supporting McMaster.

"General McMaster and I are working very well together," the statement read.  "He is a good man and very pro-Israel.  I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country."

McMaster already had been in the spotlight for the series of firings he's ordered on the National Security Council.  Most recently, he ousted Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council who had been viewed as a Trump loyalist.

But Circa first reported Thursday that McMaster sent a letter giving Rice access to classified material, weeks after her alleged role was disclosed in 'unmasking' identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports.

McMaster may have served his country well while in uniform, but he is not serving his country well as national security adviser.  McMaster insists that the letter to Rice was a pro forma letter sent to every former national security adviser and every former president.  But Susan Rice's record is anything but pro forma, and precedent can be broken, especially when the individual arguably should be in jail and not in public service.

McMaster's cozy relationship with Benghazi liar Susan Rice, who thought traitor Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction" and was likely part of the cabal that unmasked Flynn, has long raised eyebrows:

Last year, McMaster drew the ire of nearly all Trump supporters when he inexplicably defended Obama flack Susan Rice's unmasking of Trump Team members for the purposes of spying.

In addition, McMaster even went so far as to consult Susan Rice on issues and take her advice.

McMaster is virtually alone among Trump associates and supporters in thinking Susan Rice did nothing wrong in the unmasking and leaking of information on Trump officials like Flynn:

National security adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly determined that Susan Rice, who served in his role during the Obama administration, did not do anything wrong amid accusations of "unmasking" the identities of Trump associates.

Republican lawmakers are trying to conclude whether Rice revealed the identities of Trump transition team members that were redacted in intelligence reports. Bloomberg on Thursday cited two intelligence officials saying that McMaster had found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The news comes the same day Circa reported that McMaster sent Rice a letter at the end of April informing her that she would keep her security clearance and that the National Security Council would waive her "need to know" requirement.

McMaster's activities and personnel decisions belied his loyalty to the current administration and certainly called into question his professed pro-Israel credentials.

McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump.  According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.

Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump's visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall.

What hasn't been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall.  At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem.  But it wasn't.  It was McMaster.

And even that, it works out wasn't sufficient for McMaster.  He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial – ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.

McMaster's actions have raised the question of just whose side he is on.  As has been noted here, McMaster has retained all former Obama assistants to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, including Ben Rhodes's staffers, as the question of who is leaking classified information for political purposes remains.  That under-covered story was brought up by retired U.S. Army colonel Tony Schaffer on Lou Dobbs's show on Fox Business: 

Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama's staff are still in the National Security Council. H.R. McMaster has not fired any of them.  Instead he fired the man who agrees with Trump's agenda, Col. [Derek] Harvey.

McMaster doesn't see it as a problem.

"There's no such thing as a holdover," H.R. McMaster said back in July, referring to the career professionals who stayed on the council after the presidential transition. McMaster added that career staffers are loyal to the president.

Lt. Col. [Anthony] Schaffer reacted on Fox Business.

"One of the things I heard today was H. R. McMaster has not fired a number of people who worked for Obama.  In fact, those who worked for some of the staffers, Ben Rhodes for example, well Ben Rhodes has got his staff is still there.  It's like having a rattlesnake next to your bed and thinking somehow if you're just nice enough to the snake it's going to be nice.  It's not like that."

In a Facebook post, Glick comments on McMaster's keeping Ben Rhodes staff members while purging Trump loyalists:

McMaster disagrees [with] and actively undermines Trump's agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda.  He fires all of Trump's loyalists and replaces them with Trump's opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk.  He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think.  He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes' and Valerie Jarrett's people in place.

Trump appreciates loyalty and is in turn loyal to those who faithfully share his agenda.  Clearly, H.R. McMaster is not.  Trump's loyalty to him was misplaced.  A good step in draining the swamp is to replace McMaster with John Bolton, who will promote the Trump agenda and not fraternize with Trump's political enemies.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.