John Bolton, challenged as to why he reserved his claims about Trump's behavior for a book deal, has a grimly convincing excuse: revealing them during his former boss's impeachment trial wouldn't have made any difference because his party controls the Senate. American voters are the only jury with the power to get dispose of him.
The book, out Tuesday, is titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir [Amazon] and promises to be a blockbuster. It bears real dirt and was made sensational after the administration suddenly moved to block its publication. A judge ended that effort, remarking that the horse was out the barn, and it is: some of the key claims have already generated headlines and the text of the book has leaked widely.
Some key claims:
As revealed in a taster posted last week, Trump asked President Xi Jinping of China to help him win the 2020 election. "I would print Trump's exact words," Bolton writes, "but the government's prepublication review process has decided otherwise."
Trump gave personal approval to China's detention of at least 1m Uighur muslims in concentration camps: "According to our interpreter," Bolton writes, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do."
Trump regularly says outrageous things to get more important stories out the news. In one example, he defended Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi to get Ivanka Trump's use of private email servers out of the news. It worked: "This will divert from Ivanka. If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing."
Trump wants to be president for life. "Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him," Bolton writes. "Xi said the US had too many elections, because he didn't want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly."
His cronies, such as Mike Pompeo, casually mock him behind his back. Bolton relays a remark from the Secretary of State that Trump "is so full of shit," written on a notepad during negotiations with North Korea.
Trump thought it would be "cool" to invade Venezuela and steal its oil: Second-hand from John Kelly ("Trump doesn't care what happens to these guys. He says it would be 'cool' to invade Venezuela.") and first-hand that "we should take the oil in Venezuela after ousting Maduro."
The supposed "adult" handlers were self-serving morons who made Trump paranoid. On the John Kellys of the White House, Bolton is scathing:
The axis of adults in many respects caused enduring problems not because they successfully managed Trump, as the High-Minded … have it, but because they did precisely the opposite. They didn't do nearly enough to establish order, and what they did do was so transparently self-serving and so publicly dismissive of many of Trump's very clear goals, (whether worthy or unworthy) that they fed Trump's already-suspicious mind-set, making it harder for those who came later to have legitimate policy exchanges with the President.
