Trump Admin vs. John Bolton's Book

[lpetrich]

TRANSCRIPT: John Bolton interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz - ABC News

RADDATZ: And you wrote the president was not just uninformed, but stunningly uninformed. Can you give us some examples?

BOLTON: Well, there are parts of history that you would expect a president to learn over time. No, no president comes to office with 360 degrees knowledge of every aspect of our affairs. But there were things that we went over again and again and again, that just didn't seem to sink in, like why was the Korean peninsula partitioned in 1945 at the end of World War II, and what did that lead to and how did we get to that point? There are just bits of history that help to inform the current context of a lot of situations. And we just never made headway on many of them.

They ought to have used the 25th Amendment on him -- anyone so incapable of learning on the job is not fit for that kind of job.

About re-election:

So a lot of people who did not really observe the president up close have complained that he has a short attention span. And he doesn't focus. I wanna say when it comes to reelection, his attention span was infinite. And his focus was very direct. It's just too bad there wasn't more of that when it came to national security.

Seems like he cares much more about being re-elected than about doing a good job.

RADDATZ: And when President Trump talks about Kim Jong Un, he talks about these love letters, and these bromance. And -- we love each other. Do you think he really believes that Kim Jong Un loves him?

BOLTON: I don't know any other explanation. I think Kim Jong Un gets a huge laugh out of this. I mean, these letters that the president has shown to the press -- off the record and whatnot, but I've been in the room when he's done it -- are written by some functionary in the North Korean Workers Party Agitprop Office.

And yet, the president has looked at 'em as evidence of this deep friendship. Even if it were a deep personal relationship, it doesn't change the fact Kim Jong Un is never gonna give up his nuclear weapons program. And from the U.S. national security point of view, that is the only thing that matters.

I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if Vladimir Putin also gets a big laugh out of how easy Trump is to fool.

Then in conclusion about NK:

RADDATZ: So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Trump's ability to make a deal on North Korea?

BOLTON: Well, I think it turned out, clearly at this point, to be zero. And I think it was because of the misperception that he could make a deal that would be satisfactory. He knew, and he would say over and over again, "I can't -- I can't do something that would make me look like a fool here," which is comforting to hear the president say. But it meant that we were saved from a bad deal with North Korea primarily because of the threat of a massive revolt by the Republican Party -- if the president had made the same kinda deal that Jimmy Carter wanted to make -- when he was negotiating during the Clinton administration, or the Clinton administration itself negotiated, or that -- Obama would have been prepared to negotiate.

 

[lpetrich]

Then the conversation turned to Trump and Putin.

RADDATZ: You say in in the book that Putin knew just how to play Trump, like comparing Hillary Clinton to the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, or saying falsely that Nicolás Maduro had big rallies. You're saying that worked on the president?

BOLTON: Yeah. I think-- I think many of these foreign leaders -- mastered the art of ringing his bells. And some were better at it than others. Chancellor [Angela] Merkel of Germany had no success. I don't think she tried. I think she just tried to say what her position was, like a normal leader would do, and expect a response. Didn't get it. But the dictators seem to be better at it than the leaders of the democracy. And I just hope that pattern is not gonna persist if he's reelected.

Then Trump and Ukraine.

RADDATZ: The New York Times reported on that August conversation. And the president denied it, tweeting, "I never told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens." Is the president lying?

BOLTON: Yes he is. And it's not the first time, either. This is why I think it's important to get these kinds of facts out on the table. The president's talked about what he wants the people to hear about Ukraine. He's talked about what he wants the people to hear about Iran, about North Korea, about Russia, about China.

I think -- you know, foreign governments are not gonna be fascinated by what they read in my book. And I don't think President Trump really fears what foreign governments are gonna read in the book. He fears what the American people are gonna read.

They'd likely say "It's all in character with everything else we know about Trump and his administration." Including stuff that they may not be willing to talk about in public.

About the impeachment proceedings,

RADDATZ: You were a star witness to something the president was on trial for, something you say you now find deeply disturbing, possibly criminal. Yet, you felt no obligation at all to tell the American people about this? Whether in testimony on the hill or an interview or a statement or anything?

BOLTON: I was fully prepared -- if I got a subpoena like everybody else who testified got a subpoena. I think the way the House advocates of impeachment proceeded was badly wrong.

Then arguing that the Democrats scheduled it around Joe Biden's campaigning for the party's nomination.

RADDATZ: But you could have testified. You could have made some sort of statement. Your critics say you put your personal profit over the country by saving your depiction of Trump for this book.

BOLTON: I think that's absolutely wrong. The fact was, the way the Democrats misused the process, the way they drove Republicans in the House away from them ...

... And people watched it on TV. It was a partisan catfight. There was no in -- this was -- this was so far removed from the Ervin committee -- hearings of the Watergate era, which I remember quite well.

As if anything could have gotten to the Republicans. They seem committed to Trump no matter what, even if it endangers their re-election chances.

... My view is when you take the extraordinary step of removing a president from office, you have to do it in a serious way. The only way to win an impeachment would have been to get Republicans to go along. And the Democrats abandoned that idea almost before they got started.

... Because, a.) an impeachment process that was serious and not partisan, like Watergate, would have taken the time to cover all these areas. They were in a rush. They wanted to get it done much earlier than the beginning of the presidential nomination contest.

They didn't quite make it. But the fact was, they had a strategy that suited their political objectives. And it's not my obligation to help the Democrats out of their own problem. My judgment was that I was prepared to testify. But I think now this is actually a better time to tell the story. Because now the American people can look at it in the context of the most important political decision we make as a nation every four years.

He didn't say how the Democrats might have gotten to the Republicans about Trump's misconduct, however.

 

[lpetrich]

RADDATZ: OK. I want to go back over a couple of things. You say that President Putin plays Donald Trump like a fiddle. What does he do? How does he do it? What should Americans think of that?

BOLTON: President Putin prepares very comprehensively for meetings. He knows the people he's talking to. He thinks about what he wants to say. He thinks about the points he wants to accomplish. And I think he looks at somebody like Donald Trump and says to himself -- as an old KGB officer, "How am I gonna get him to the place I want him to be?"

I think that's a level of preparation, of thoroughness -- of -- pre-planning that just would not register with Donald Trump. That's not to say Putin succeeds all the time. But he has a plan and he pursues it. And I can just see the smirk when he knows he's got him following his line. It's almost transparent.

Shows how psychologically deficient Trump is. From his speeches, someone deduced that he has a low level of the Big Five trait of conscientiousness. That's associated with diligence, orderliness, and the like. So it's not surprising that Trump is very poor at planning. He is also very impulsive, something that also fits low c'ness.

C'ness is positively correlated with academic and career achievement, something not very surprising. Not surprisingly, most other Presidents have been high on c'ness. There are some exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, noted for a similar lack of attention in daily briefings.

RADDATZ: Donald Trump, as we say, sees himself as a dealmaker. But Vladimir Putin says he's easily manipulated. What happened to the dealmaker in those situations?

BOLTON: Well, the president may well be a superb dealmaker when it comes to Manhattan real estate. Dealing with Syria, dealing with arms limitation treaties on strategic weapons dealing in many, many other international security issues are things far removed from his life experience.

Good point about Trump's limitations.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll continue.

RADDATZ: And I want to go back to Ukraine for a moment. Why was President Trump so obsessed, as you say, with Joe Biden, with Ukraine?

BOLTON: Fundamentally, the pursuit of the Russia collusion issue was, I think, for many Democrats, an effort to delegitimize the Trump presidency. And I think the president could've handled it in a variety of different ways. But in his inimitable style, he concluded the way to respond was to delegitimize the Democrats, to go after Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden through the Ukraine and through a variety of other steps.

Politically, that's fine. That's what politicians do. The line here that was crossed was trying to use a foreign government and to use the resources of the United States government to pressure that foreign government to do something to help Donald Trump politically.

So it's putting getting re-elected above national security.

RADDATZ: So let's go back over this. You describe the president as "erratic, foolish, behaved irrationally, bizarrely. You can't leave him alone for a minute. He saw conspiracies behind rocks and was stunningly uninformed. He couldn't tell the difference between his personal interests and the country's interests." When you put all that together, how can anyone come away, after reading your book, and make any conclusion other than that you don't think he is fit for office?

BOLTON: I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job. I don't think he's a conservative Republican. I'm not gonna vote for him in November. Certainly not gonna vote for Joe Biden either. I'm gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in. But this comes back to the point of why I wrote the book.

Let's see who he comes up with.

RADDATZ: And you talk about the vindictiveness, as you say, of President Trump. And you cite John McCain, even after he had died. What did you see in terms of his vindictiveness?

BOLTON: I think it's a focus on going after people even after the purpose of doing so really has served no further purpose. And -- you know, I have to say, after a while, I just was deadened to it. And I could observe it. And I just put it aside 'cause it obviously wasn't anything I was gonna change.

...
RADDATZ: The president has said this will put him in a bad position with world leaders. And you've said a lot of things about those world leaders, if you were president, you certainly wouldn't want your former national security advisor to be saying you are easily manipulated, that the Russian president could play you like a fiddle. Why does that not matter as he goes forward?

BOLTON: Well, it's not telling Vladimir Putin anything that he doesn't already know. And it's telling the American people something they may not be aware of. I think everybody in Washington's an adult. My assumption is essentially, anything I said during my government service could end up in the pages of our great national newspapers the next morning.

Except for the big baby in the White House, it seems.

RADDATZ: What about your own relationship with the president? Throughout the book you said you were close to resigning on a handful of occasions. You said one of those occasions, a turning point, was the night there were no retaliatory strikes against Iran at the time for bombing some ships in the Persian Gulf or placing explosives on the side of them, for shooting down one of our very high tech drones. That was a turning point for you?

BOLTON: Yes. I think at that point -- if I look back on it, it only became a matter of time -- when I actually resigned. And this is something people can disagree with me, that maybe I shoulda resigned right then. But I felt and I understand how others in analogous situations still in the government can feel, that there were still contributions I could make.

...
RADDATZ: Do you fear at all you could be prosecuted?

BOLTON: Look -- under Donald Trump -- no -- no regular rules here apply. But I am confident that there's no national security information, no classified information in the book. I didn't intend to write anything that revealed classified information. I don't wanna do anything that would benefit our adversaries around the world. I wrote this to help inform the American people. I feel very confident after going through four months of page by page, line by line prepublication review, that there's no classified information in the book.

He shows diligence and sense of responsibility, things that the pResident totally lacks.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Seems like he cares much more about being re-elected than about doing a good job.

So, what kind of pathology is it when you so strongly desire to win back a job you don't actually seem to want to do? Just because you hate to "lose". Certifiable!

 

[barbos]

Most important question was not answered.
Is Finland part of Russia? Vladimir Putin wants to know.

 

[lpetrich]

Then about a certain contemporary event, something that happened after he left the White House staff.

RADDATZ: I wanna close with where the country is right now and a couple of things. And I know you talk about Gen. Kelly at one point worried about the president's style and worried about how he would be in a crisis, another 9/11 type crisis. We're in the middle of a pandemic. How do you think the president has handled that?

BOLTON: I think he's handled it very poorly. There're a lot of criticisms about what happened-- who was responsible and so on. The main problem the administration has had with coronavirus is the empty chair behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office. In early January, people, whether on the staff of the National Security Council or the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere were saying, "This is a potential problem."

Donald Trump didn't wanna hear about it. He didn't wanna hear about it because he didn't wanna hear bad things about Xi Jinping. He didn't wanna hear bad things about China covering up what had happened with the outset of the disease. He didn't wanna hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the fantastic trade deal he was working on, No. 1.

And No. 2, he didn't wanna hear anything about an exogenous variable that could have a negative effect on the American economy, which he saw as his ticket to reelection. So for months, it was contained. It wasn't a problem. There was no economic effect.

And I think we lost a lotta time because of that. That is an example of making policy out of your hip pocket, without systematic consideration of what needs to be done, despite being warned by the people charged with making the warnings that it was coming.

Familiar territory for me. It is very evident that he didn't do much about it. His staffers ought to have threatened the 25th Amendment or even shipping him off to The Hague.

RADDATZ: He talks about President Obama leaving the cupboards bare and that they couldn't do anything about that.

BOLTON: That's three years ago. That's three years ago. And the absence of personal protective equipment and the other things, these were all issues that could've been mitigated had the administration acted earlier. But because of the potential which we've now seen as a reality of the effect on the economy, he did not wanna consider it.

And I think this is something that -- that certainly was on my mind. If -- if you look at this response to the pandemic now, what does it tell Russia, China, other countries that violate the biological weapons convention about the utility of this as a form of attack on the United States?

That's an interesting perspective. It was worth reading through that interview to get that.

RADDATZ: Do you remember any time in the White House when you discussed a possible pandemic?

BOLTON: Sure. One of the things that -- that we looked at very seriously during the 2018 period continuing until actually after I left was the renewed Ebola outbreak in the eastern Congo and the Great Lakes region of Africa where the international reaction was not as serious as it might've been.

Then how the Administration handled that outbreak - very well, or at least so says JB.

 

[lpetrich]

RADDATZ: How do you think history will remember Donald Trump?

BOLTON: I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from. We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence -- even if it's not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November.

Two terms, I'm more troubled about. But I'm really troubled about the absence as well of a viable national security wing in the Democratic Party. So this is an election for me of a choice of two unacceptable alternatives. And it's not one I relish.

I agree on Trump, and I think that he will go down in history as one of the worst Presidents ever -- if not *the* worst.

RADDATZ: You say President Trump is unfit for office and you're talking about the election, do you worry about his commitment to the democratic process?

BOLTON: I don't think he fully understands the democratic process. I don't think he fully understands the Constitution. I don't necessarily view that as malevolent. But I view it as very (LAUGH) concerning that he does not appreciate the proper role of the presidency. With no prior experience in government, which is not a bad thing -- it nonetheless leads him in directions that can often causes problems. It's certainly the case in national security. It's the case in domestic affairs, too.

I doubt that he has much understanding of *any* of it.

RADDATZ: Tell us what happened the day you resigned.

BOLTON: I came into the West Wing as usual -- about 6 o’clock. I wrapped up a bunch of things that had been pending. I had my resignation letter prepared. I gave it to Christine Samuelian, my assistant, to take down to the Oval Office. I left to go home so I would be out of range when the letter hit.

And we were preparing to announce it a few hours later, when the president, obviously stunned at what had happened, tweeted first. So -- we tweeted the actual circumstances of the resignation. And at that point, my Twitter account was shut off.

Trump claimed about it that he fired JB, and JB said about it that Trump doesn't like being upstaged.

 

[Elixir]

Bolton broke the law and has been called out and rebuked for so doing, with a really big price to pay. He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2020

Trump’s threat to Bolton wasn’t lost on Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA):

1. Newsflash: You lost the case
2. You just threatened, on @twitter, to kill a political opponent. https://t.co/ktxjmwrB37

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 20, 2020

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I never thought I'd live to see the day when a President uses "I was joking" as the new "I was just following orders."

 

[Elixir]

I never thought I'd live to see the day when a President uses "I was joking" as the new "I was just following orders."

I never thought a major social media platform would allow and maintain users' assassination threats to Congressmen.