Bolton: Trump's White House was like living in `a pinball machine'
WASHINGTON–If he had been a senator during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year, John Bolton says he probably would have voted for a conviction.
There' s a certain irony in that, given that Trump's former national security adviser, out Tuesday with an explosive new book about his former boss, refused to testify in the House impeachment hearing sand then offered to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed; Senate Republicans predictably declined before voting to acquit.
But on that, as on most things, Bolton is unapologetic about his decisions. He is not a man given to second thoughts or particularly worried about provoking the person generally seen as the most powerful in the world, the one who went to court to try to stop publication of the book and seize his proceeds.
Witness what happened when his interview with USA TODAY on Thursday was over: Bolton stood to pose for a photograph holding a copy of “The Room Where It Happened,” the memoir being published by Simon & Schuster. “Shall I hold it like this?” he asked with a broad grin, lifting it over his head.
He was unmistakably mimicking Trump's controversial photo op this month when the president held aloft a Bible in front of St. John's Church after protesters had been cleared from his way in Lafayette Square in Washington.
It is not revealing classified information to report that relations between the former national security adviser and the president he served have gotten a little rocky.
One tantalizing passage in t he book suddenly seemed prescient this weekend when t he Trump administration fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained in December 2018 about the office' s investigation into a Turkish state- owned bank, Bolton wrote, “Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things” once he replaced Southern District prosecutors with “his people.”
“I don't think we know at this point” whether the precipitating event for the firing involved the Turkish bank, called Halkbank, or something else, Bolton said in a brief follow-up interview Sunday. But he said “it could be consistent” with the president's attitude toward investigations that he observed when he was in the White House.
Four months before the election, Bolton ,71, is out with a book that port rays Trump as incompetent, uninformed, in curious, erratic, enamored with foreign strongmen, obsessed with his reelection and driven solely by self-interest – in a word, unfit to be president. “He's almost proud of not learning much about the subject matter of national security,” Bolton said. He called working in the Trump White House “like living inside a pinball machine.”
The president has responded to accounts of Bolton's book with a volley of insults. He told Politico that his former top aide was a “sick customer” and someone seen by his White House colleagues as “totally nuts.” To Sean Hannity on Fox News, he called Bolton “a washed-up guy.” On Twitter, he described “Wacko John Bolton” as “a disgruntled boring fool ,” adding, “What a dope!”