Ex-U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton condemned former President Donald Trump as an utterly self-interested man who would avenge personal enemies and subdue adversaries Russia and China in a new edition of his memoir released on Tuesday.
Bolton, who served in Trump’s White House in 2018 and 2019, blamed the Republican presidential frontrunner for having no political ideology or coherent policy outlook. If re-elected, Trump could quit the NATO security alliance, curb aid to Ukraine despite Russia’s 2022 invasion, prompting China to blockade Taiwan and generally pursue isolationism, Bolton cautioned.
“Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton wrote in the new introduction to “The Room Where It Happened,” his account of the 17 months he spent as Trump’s national security adviser. “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.” While Trump throws himself as the underdog’s champion, once saying, “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” Bolton claims he is fundamentally self-regarding.
“Trump cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term,” he noted in the forward to the paperback edition of his memoir, which smeared a bleak picture of America during a second Trump term.
Trump senior advisor Jason Miller stated: “For someone who professes to have such great disdain for President Trump, ‘Book Deal Bolton’ sure has found a way to grift off the relationship”. Bolton expressed that before serving Trump, he wrongly believed the burdens of office would discipline the president. In the occurrence, he found the former president devoured by self-interest.
“He cares almost exclusively about his interests,” Bolton writes, saying Trump would want to be surrounded by “a White House of serfs” to execute his orders unquestioningly.
He also creates a case that Trump, revered by the right for selecting Supreme Court justices who overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised women’s constitutional right to abortion, may not follow conservative policies if re-elected.
Bolton expressed Trump’s inability to run for a third term under the U.S. Constitution, representing “the political constraints around him are much looser, and the real ‘guardrail’ of voter opinion will be minimised.”
Bolton holds some of his fiercest words for foreign policy, noting Trump sent an “isolationist virus” coursing through the Republican party and that “in no arena … has the Trump aberration been more destructive than in national security.”
He also asserted Trump could exit from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a prospect likely to delight Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that “it is almost inevitable that a second-term Trump policy on Ukraine will favour Moscow.”
Taiwan and others along China’s edge “face real peril in a second Trump term,” Bolton adds, indicating that the risks of China under President Xi Jinping fabricating a crisis over Taiwan – perhaps by blockading the island – would rise.
“It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping, who would be happiest to see Trump back in office,” he notes.
Moreover, earlier, Bolton called for “disproportionate” strikes inside Iran after a drone attack killed three U.S. service members in Jordan.
Bolton stated on Sunday night on NewsNation that the U.S. must carry out retaliatory attacks in the trace of the deadly drone strike. He expressed the U.S. needs to “impose enough pain on Iran” to ensure it does not attempt a similar attack on the U.S. again.
“To be clear, I don’t think it should be proportionate. I think it should be disproportionate. That’s how you create deterrence in your adversary’s mind, that the cost to them of attacking our forces is so high they won’t do it again,” he stated. Bolton indicated the U.S. must target Iranian naval vessels in the Red Sea, Quds Force bases in western Iran and other air defence locations in Iran.
