Wait, what?

NEW YORK — H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s embattled national security adviser, has once again minimized the religious motivations of terrorist groups, this time referring to the ideology of Mideast jihadists as “irreligious.”

In a BBC radio interview posted online on Wednesday, McMaster was asked about the U.S. fight to rid the region of the Islamic State.

After calling out Iran for “interacting” with Salafi jihadist groups, McMaster continued (emphasis added):

And so what has to happen is a removal of these drivers of conflict. And that means defeating these jihadist terrorist organizations so that they can’t come back. That means denying them control of territory, populations, resources. Drying up their financing. But then also defeating their wicked ideology to expose their ideology as irreligious and illegitimate. And then it also involves addressing Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region.