KT McFarland

Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland was President Trump’s first Deputy National Security Advisor, starting with the Trump Tower Transition and through the early months of the Administration.  She also chaired the interagency Deputies’ Committee, which brings together government departments and agencies to make policy recommendations to the President. She initiated the Trump Administration’s reassessment of a range of national security issues, beginning with North Korea and China.

Prior to her role in the Trump White House, KT was FOX News’ National Security Analyst from 2010-2016 and appeared regularly on FOX and FOX Business News programs. Ms. McFarland anchored FOXNews.com’s “DEFCON3” and wrote a regular column for the FOX Opinion page. During this period, she also appeared weekly as commentator for several national radio shows.

Previously, Ms. McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations as an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Staff, Senior Speechwriter to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and later Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Pentagon spokesman. Among other accomplishments, she drafted 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, Ms. McFarland received the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Award, for her work in the Reagan Administration. She was a Republican candidate for the US Senate from New York in 2006. In 2015, the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute named her Woman of the Year.

Ms. McFarland has also acted as a senior policy fellow for the ACU Foundation Statesmanship and Diplomacy Center, a board member of the Jamestown Foundation, and a distinguished advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

McFarland received a B.A. from George Washington University, a M.A. from Oxford University, and completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD program (all but dissertation) with concentrations on nuclear weapons, China, and the Soviet Union.

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