White House National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton talks to reporters Wednesday, May 1, 2019, outside the West Wing entrance of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
In response to John Bolton’s new memoir, which the New York Times review describes as a recounting of “Bolton not being able to accomplish very much,” President Trump called Bolton “A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.” George Neumayr writes of Bolton in The American Spectator (abridged):
Few events make the media purr more than a memoir written by a defector from a Republican administration. John Bolton joins a long list of such bitter memoirists, who date back to the days of David Stockman. The key to these memoirs is that they buttress the prejudices of the media. Bolton has made sure to calibrate his memoir to that requirement, blasting Trump for his alleged corruption and incompetence.
But how newsworthy are these memoirs exactly? They invariably follow the same pattern: the memoirist enters the Republican administration disagreeing with its policies; he leaves the administration disagreeing with its policies. How is that news? What’s newsworthy is not that they were fired but that they were hired in the first place.
“The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much,” says a review in the New York Times
Trump has summed up Bolton with his usual elan: “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.
Bolton, the cold bureaucrat of the D.C. war machine, was prepared to kill innocent people. Trump wasn’t. Yet we’re told that it is Trump who is corrupt and unpresidential? That doesn’t make any sense. Nor does Bolton’s claim that every decision Trump made “was driven” by reelection considerations make any sense. Trump, if anything, never hesitates to place unpopular truth-telling over political optics. All Bolton’s lame complaining amounts to is that if you agree with Bolton, you are “principled”; if you disagree with him, you are “political.”
For more on the history of John Bolton, read here:
- Bolton Ready to Start Another War That Can’t Be Won
- Bill Kristol, John Bolton, Joe Lieberman—All on the Wrong Track
- Is Appointing John Bolton Trump’s Worst Mistake?
- John McCain & John Bolton—Neocons Ablaze
- John Bolton, Most Often Dead Wrong but Never in Doubt
- VIDEO: Bolton “A Bureaucratic Tapeworm”
- John Bolton Never Belonged Near the White House
- Tucker Carlson: Bolton is a Man of the Left
- John Bolton the National Security Liar?
- Trump Must Dump Bolton, Cut Off the Saudis
- National Security Advisor Bolton a Thorn in Trump’s Side
- National Security Advisor Bolton Pushing Trump Toward War
- Keep America Safe, Fire Pompeo and Bolton
- Pompeo and Bolton Looking For War With Iran?
- John Bolton: Reckless and Incompetent?
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