US President Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor (NSA) believes his former boss is not fit for office and lacks the competence to carry out the job. Those are the words of John Bolton in an interview with a US News Network ahead of the release of his much-anticipated book next week about his 17 months working as Trump’s third NSA.
Bolton refused to reveal his insider knowledge during the president’s impeachment inquiry last year, saving his information for a book whose publication and release the Justice Department is now seeking to block.
The Room Where It Happened is due for release next Tuesday with John Bolton already sitting down with news media to discuss its contents, as he did in this ABC News Interview.
“I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job. There really isn’t a guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s re-election,” Bolton reveals.
The White House claims the book is in violation of a non-disclosure agreement and compromises national security.
President Donald Trump says, “Somebody said he went out and wrote a book. If he wrote a book, I can’t imagine that he can, because that’s highly classified information. Even conversations with me, they’re highly classified. I told that to the Attorney General before. I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he’s broken the law.”
But the book’s already been printed and distributed to various news media for review and reporting.
In the book, Bolton reveals among others, that Trump didn’t like sanctions on Russia that intelligence agencies and Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded interfered in the 2016 election; that the president viewed Venezuela as part of the US insisting on military options to oust President Nicolas Maduro; that he wanted the Attorney General to arrest CNN journalists for reporting on a secretive meeting on Afghanistan at one of his private properties; or that Trump asked China’s president to buy American agricultural products to boost his re-election prospects.
The latter prompted a response from China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian, saying, “China always follows the principle of non-interference in (other countries’) internal affairs. We have no intention to, nor will we interfere in the US’ internal affairs and the US elections.”
As Americans become more critical of the presidential incumbent over the poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police brutality, a new poll shows his Democratic rival Joe Biden opening up a 13-point lead among registered voters.
“It’s bad management on top of bad planning, on top of neglect and it’s totally unacceptable for a great nation like ours. Folks here’s the truth: the pandemic is still here. It’s going to be here for the foreseeable future until we get it under control or until we have a safe and proven widely-available vaccine. COVID-19 is a fact of nature. We have to deal with this virus and everything that comes with it. We have to deal with it head-on. Honestly, we have to tell people the truth.”
Trump supporters will argue that he was once counted out in an election and turned the tables on everyone in 2016 – and they’d be right. But given the barrage of negative news – be it his bungled response to the coronavirus and rising death toll or the militarised response to protestors outside the White House ahead of his photo op outside a church holding a Bible, or these new revelations in Bolton’s book – an arch-conservative and former White House insider whose analysis will be difficult to simply dismiss.
