THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

It may have been a 'mistake' not to have challenged Trump, Bolton says

It may have been a 'mistake' not to have challenged Trump, Bolton says

WASHINGTON - Former national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that it may have been a "mistake" not to challenge President Donald Trump more aggressively during his tenure at the White House but that he tried to focus on U.S. foreign policy rather than on Trump's actions. 

"I'm not an investigator," Bolton said during a Washington Post Live event. "I had plenty of stuff to do. . . . I told other White House advisers of my concern [and] I tried to do my job." 

Bolton, who has come under intensifying criticism about the motivations behind his new book, "The Room Where It Happened," said Americans have a misconception about the ability of White House advisers to challenge the president, suggesting that such pushback may have been futile but that he couldn't say for certain. 

"Service in the White House is not like the 'West Wing,' " he said, referring to the TV drama. "There aren't dramatic confrontations with the president." 

"It's easy from the outside to say that was wrong, and maybe it was a mistake," Bolton added. 

The lifelong Republican released his memoir on Tuesday after a high-profile legal battle with the White House and advanced excerpts of the 592-page book ensured its place on best-seller lists.

Bolton's book has quickly achieved a rare feat in the Trump era: uniting a divided political system - against John Bolton. 

The renowned foreign-policy hawk has come under sustained attack from the president, who on Tuesday called him a "washed up Creepster" and a "lowlife."

The White House has accused Bolton of publishing classified information and is seeking to claw back the $2 million advance Bolton received. A judge on Saturday rejected a request to block the sale of the book but said Bolton probably "jeopardized national security" and exposed himself to criminal prosecution.

Republicans in Congress have also impugned Bolton's motives, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California saying, "Money drives a lot of people to say a lot of things," and tweeting that the book "could jeopardize our national security. Appalling."

Democrats, meanwhile, have expressed disgust at Bolton's decision to wait until the publication of his book to reveal his allegation that the president's wrongdoing went far beyond the scope of the House impeachment probe, an assertion to which Bolton did not testify.

"I don't want to pay money for a book that was a substitute for testifying before Congress about the well-being of the American people," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Bolton told The Post that he entered the Trump administration hoping the then-ubiquitous stories of Trump's chaotic and fickle management style were exaggerated, but soon found out that they were accurate. 

Bolton said the "most disturbing moment in the early days" of his tenure was at the NATO summit in Brussels in 2018 when Trump was "really was very close to withdrawing" from the alliance. Bolton said he, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis did everything they could to prevent him from doing so. 

"We all worked in various ways to help persuade the president not actually to withdraw," he said. "That whole incident, which played out over a 48-hour period, was very unnerving to me." 

The book itself has spawned a media bonanza with pages upon pages of palace intrigue and detailed accounts of a rock-ribbed conservative expressing amazement at the president's lack of knowledge about the world and gleefulness in breaking the law to protect himself in a pattern of actions that amounted to "obstruction of justice as a way of life," Bolton wrote.

In the book, Bolton accuses Trump of being obsequious to authoritarians and dictators, offering to lessen sanctions on the Chinese firm ZTE and the Turkish bank Halkbank to curry favor with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Bolton says Trump approved of China's jailing of more than 1 million Chinese Muslims in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang and likened negotiating with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to dating women - always wanting to break with the "girl" first rather than risk being dumped.

Democrats, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, described Trump's actions in the book as "revolting" but said "I would have preferred Mr. Bolton to tell these stories under oath at the impeachment trial."

On Tuesday, Bolton accused the Democrats of failing to build bipartisan consensus during the impeachment process, and because of that "partisan" quality, he didn't think it would be worth it to jump "off the cliff" in service of their cause. 

"If the goal was removing him from office, they did it in 180 degrees the wrong way," said Bolton. 

Some Democrats have said Bolton, whose conservative credentials are not in doubt, would've been the ideal witness for bringing Republicans into the fold. 

In interviews given since the book has come out, Bolton has called Trump unfit for office and said he should not be reelected, but ruled out voting for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

"I'm going to figure out a conservative Republican to write in," he said.

 

 

RELATED
nationthailand