Trump's ignorance
We don't need former national security adviser John Bolton to tell us that President Trump is geographically illiterate, although it is entertaining to read in his forthcoming book, "The Room Where It Happened," that the president asked if Finland was part of Russia.
The more serious charges in Bolton's book go far beyond Trump's need of a geographic compass and point to his obvious lack of a moral compass. If the allegation is true, Trump offered to sell our democracy to China - the country he now blames for the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more Americans than died in WWI.
In a leaked version of the book, the president was eager to get the Chinese government engaged in securing a Trump victory by offering up our markets for Chinese products while conducting a trade war. Moreover, Trump attempted to blame Democrats for any policy the Chinese didn't like.
Among the most egregious policy pronouncements Trump made, according to Bolton's book, was telling Chinese President Xi Jinping that he endorsed Beijing's now-infamous archipelago of prison camps for minority Uighurs, about a million of whom have been detained and abused. Bolton writes, "According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do."
Another official said something similar, "which meant we could cross repression of the Uighurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued."
On Ukraine, Bolton's early accounts and his book suggest that President Trump was guilty as charged by the Democrats in the impeachment investigation for withholding foreign assistance in exchange for an investigation of his rival Joe Biden. (I still wish Bolton had chosen to testify to that effect last year.)
The most important
Bolton's book lies less part in of the episodes he recalls - although each is quite damning. The significance is in the overall portrayal of a man missing the basic knowledge and instincts to govern. You can rely on