‘Help me get re-elected, Donald Trump asked Xi’
Donald Trump asked the Chinese president to help him win re-election by buying more from US farmers, John Bolton has reportedly claimed in his new book.
The revelation is just one of a series of damaging allegations set to be published in Bolton’s book, according to multiple US media reports.
Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser until September, recounts a conversation between the US president and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, in the book, according to The Washington Post.
During the meeting, said to have taken place at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Trump appeared to start talking about the Democrats, his political opponents.
‘‘He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win’’, Bolton writes, according to the paper.
‘‘He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.’’
The claim that Trump – already impeached for trying to get Ukraine to help his election chances by investigating his Democrat rival Joe Biden – lobbied China to also help him politically is explosive.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bolton claims Trump also told Xi the US public wanted to remove the two-term constitutional limit for him.
‘‘One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him,’’ the extract says.
Bolton also claims Trump told Xi building concentration camps for Muslims ‘‘was exactly the right thing to do’’, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Such a statement would contradict US policy opposing the treatment of the
Uighurs, a Muslim minority subject to imprisonment, re-education and forced labour in China.
Bolton claims Trump did not know Britain was a nuclear country and thought Finland could be part of Russia, The New York Times reports.
Bolton reportedly argues that the congressmen who led the impeachment should have looked more widely at Trump’s behaviour. He was impeached by the House of Representatives over the Ukraine scandal, but the Senate voted not to remove him from office.
The US Justice Department has sued Bolton to try to stop publication of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, but it is top of Amazon’s bestseller list. – The Daily Telegraph