On Wednesday many media sources, including LifeZette, were given access to the manuscript of a new book by former U.N. Ambassador and National Security Advisor John Bolton. In it, Bolton is extremely critical of President Trump.
Bolton’s animosity stems from his bruised ego over his very public firing and the basic geopolitical disconnect between the neocon Bolton and the America First Trump.
But Bolton, who had access to America’s most sensitive secrets, wrote the book without official clearance to safeguard he is not compromising national security. As such, the Trump administration has gone to court to stop publication.
The Justice Department is seeking an emergency injunction halting the release of Bolton’s book, saying Bolton bypassed the necessary classification review process and that his manuscript still contains classified information. If so and it was published, the book could do serious damage to the country’s defense posture and international security status.
There are also those quoted in the book who claim Bolton is not relating the facts accurately.
A source close to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told media late Wednesday: “Bolton is about selling books, not about telling the truth.“ Bolton claimed, during an international meeting, Pompeo passed him a note about the president that read, “He is so full of sh**.” The source added that Pompeo isn’t a note-passer, and suggested Bolton should verify his claim by producing the purported note.
Other Trump officials, including veep Mike Pence, Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, are telling the press that Bolton is making up conversations out of whole cloth.
The president counterattacked in an interview with “Hannity” on Wednesday night and in tweets early Thursday, Trump called Bolton a “Wacko,” a “dope,” and a “disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.” Trump said The New York Times had described Bolton’s book as “exceedingly tedious,” Trump added: “President Bush fired him also. Bolton is incompetent!”
Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
Among other Bolton claims are these:
On the basis for impeachment Trump allegedly said, “I don’t want to have any f—ing thing to do with Ukraine. They f—ing attacked me. I can’t understand why. Ask [lawyer] Joe diGenova, he knows all about it. They tried to f–k me. They’re corrupt. I’m not f—ing with them.”
On the 2020 ticket Trump, “raised the widespread political rumor he would dump [Vice President Mike] Pence from the ticket in 2020 and run instead with [then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki] Haley, asking what I thought.”
But the most serious charges and the crux of the book deal with U.S.-Chinese relations, “Xi told Trump that the U.S.-China relationship was the most important in the world.
He said that some (unnamed) American political figures were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new Cold War with China. Whether Xi meant to finger the Democrats or some of us sitting on the U.S. side of the table, I don’t know, but Trump immediately assumed that Xi meant the Democrats.
“Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
Bolton writes: “Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.”
The claims that the president considered replacing Pence and making common cause with the Chinese on concentration camps flies in the face of not only the president’s public and privately reported words, but all of his actions to this point. That is why many in and out of the media have doubts about the veracity of this book. But nevertheless, much of the press will use it to bash the president.
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on June 18, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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