Trump and Bolton fire insults over tell-all book
President Donald Trump traded insults with former national security adviser John Bolton yesterday, calling the man he had hired a ‘‘sick puppy,’’ while Bolton called the president he served incompetent and ‘‘unfit for office.’’
Reverberations from Bolton’s forthcoming tell-all account of working for Trump extended to Capitol Hill, where Republicans mostly sought to avoid commenting in detail on Bolton’s allegations, among them that Trump had sought China’s help to win re-election. In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Bolton’s claim in the book that the Israeli leader had dismissed Trump’s son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner as a dilettante.
Trump’s ferocious focus on the book failed to prevent details from spilling out, and may have backfired as Trump amplifies public attention on Bolton’s unflattering portrait of a mendacious, inattentive leader chiefly focused on bettering his own political fortunes.
The White House continued a longshot legal effort to block the book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, but beyond Trump’s broadsides that the book is filled with falsehoods, the White House did not seek to rebut Bolton point by point as the former aide began promoting the book.
A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe private deliberations, said Trump has been pushing White House counsel to be ‘‘very aggressive’’ in blocking the publication and the Justice Department is ‘‘seriously considering’’ legal steps against Bolton. The official said that Bolton outmanoeuvred the White House by releasing so many copies of the book early.
‘‘I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job,’’ Bolton said for a scheduled ABC interview.
‘‘There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection. I think he was so focused on the re-election that longer-term considerations fell by the wayside,’’ Bolton said.
Trump, meanwhile, called Bolton a ‘‘Wacko’’ and claimed that the former close aide’s account is ‘‘a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad.’’
Bolton, a former diplomat who has held high-ranking positions in Republican administrations, left the White House in September 2019 after policy disagreements with Trump. He claims he quit; Trump says he was fired.
‘‘Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!’’ Trump wrote on Twitter.
The 592-page memoir about Bolton’s 17 months in the White House portrays Trump as an ‘‘erratic’’ and ‘‘stunningly uninformed’’ commander in chief and lays out a series of jarring and troubling encounters among the president, his top advisers and foreign leaders.
‘‘Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him,’’ Trump wrote yesterday amid heavy media coverage of Bolton’s scathing account. ‘‘A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracised & happily dumped. What a dope!’’
The White House issued a news release titled Correct The Record that accused Bolton of seeking to ‘‘profit off of classified information to sell a book’’ by criticising Trump’s handling of Russia. The White House release pointed out that Bolton had said in 2018 that he did not ‘‘see evidence’’ that Trump was weak on Russia, but it did not dispute Bolton’s claims in the book.
Bolton’s book is the subject of an escalating legal battle with the Justice Department, which on Thursday asked a federal judge to issue an emergency order to block the scheduled June 23 publication. A hearing is set for today.
The Trump administration alleges that the book contains classified material. Bolton’s attorney has said that the book does not contain classified material and that it underwent an arduous review process.
The senior White House official said there is an investigation under way into whether Bolton disclosed any classified material.
Attorney General William Barr could face considerable pressure from Trump to take legal action against Bolton.
In his book, Bolton writes that Trump regularly encouraged Barr to charge John Kerry, the former secretary of state in the Obama administration, with violating the Logan Act over his conversations with Iranian officials.
The Logan Act is a relatively obscure law that prohibits private citizens from conducting diplomacy. Barr never agreed to do it, and Bolton said he repeatedly told the president why it would be legally problematic.
One former administration official who was mentioned prominently in the book said the book struck him as ‘‘accurate.’’
‘‘I knew he took notes, and he’d go back to the office and write down the notes, but I didn’t realise he took down that many notes,’’ said the former official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of both Bolton and the White House effort to sidetrack the book.
One former senior administration official said that Trump was fixated on blocking the book, repeatedly telling advisers in recent days that it had to happen at all costs and that Bolton needed to go to jail. ‘‘They aren’t going to stop the book, and it’s just giving the book more and more attention.’’
The White House circulated talking points to allies, asking them to argue publicly that Bolton broke the law and simply wanted to make money.
‘‘Mere months after he left the White House, Bolton negotiated a $2 million (NZ$3.1m) deal and drafted a 500 plus page manuscript rife with classified information,’’ the talking points say.
On Capitol Hill, Republican senators largely avoided the subject of whether Trump had behaved improperly in office, as Bolton’s portrait alleges.
Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who recently assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was asked about Bolton’s assertion that Trump appealed to Chinese President Xi Jinping for help improving his reelection odds by buying US agricultural products. ‘‘How can somebody opine on that? I wasn’t there. The president says that didn’t happen. He’s saying that it did. I mean, I have no reason to call him a liar; I have no reason to call the White House a liar,’’ Rubio told reporters.
Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said House Democrats should have compelled Bolton to testify during impeachment proceedings late last year, rather than complain now about his account of how Trump delayed $400m in aid to Ukraine to pressure officials to investigate his political rivals – the crux of the impeachment charges.
Bolton refused to testify voluntarily during the House impeachment inquiry, and House impeachment leaders decided not to prolong the process by fighting Bolton in court. Bolton was willing to testify in the Senate impeachment trial if subpoenaed, but Blunt and other Senate Republicans voted against calling witnesses.
Netanyahu denied Bolton’s claim that the long-serving Israeli leader had doubts about Kushner, whom Trump has tasked with drafting a Middle East peace proposal. ‘‘Prime Minister Netanyahu has complete faith in Jared Kushner’s abilities and resolve and rejects any description to the contrary,’’ Netanyahu’s office said. – Washington Post