KT McFarland

Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland is one of United States’ most prominent conservative foreign policy experts. She was President Trump’s first Deputy National Security Advisor and helped turn Trump’s campaign promises into his America First foreign policy.

Prior to joining the Trump Administration, McFarland was Fox News’ national security analyst. She appeared regularly on all Fox and Fox Business News programmes and was the host of FoxNews.com’s DEFCON3. McFarland also wrote a regular column for the paper’s opinion page. As a commentator, she often expressed doubts about globalism and the value of US interventions abroad.

Previously, KT McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations as an aide to Dr Henry Kissinger. She was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Staff and senior speechwriter to Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. Later, McFarland served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Pentagon spokesman.

KT McFarlanddrafted the Weinberger Doctrine speech regarding the Reagan Administration’s policy on use of force and the first draft of President Reagan’s Star Wars speech. In 1985, she received the Defense Department’s highest civilian honour, the Distinguished Service Award, for her work in the Reagan Administration. McFarland was a Republican candidate for the US Senate from New York in 2006. She has also acted as a senior policy fellow for the ACU Foundation Statesmanship and Diplomacy Centre, a board member of the Jamestown Foundation, and a distinguished advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

McFarland received a BA from George Washington University, a MA from Oxford University, and completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD programme (all but dissertation) with a focus on nuclear weapons, China, and the Soviet Union.