Trump pushes out national security hawk John Bolton
What happened
National security adviser John Bolton was forced out this week after repeatedly opposing President Trump’s overtures to American adversaries such as North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the Taliban. Trump said Bolton was “way out of line” with the administration’s foreign policy goals and had made “some very big mistakes.” For his part, the 70-year-old former ambassador to the United Nations insisted he’d offered Trump his resignation without prompting. “I will have my say in due course,” Bolton said. His ouster comes after he earned Trump’s ire for backing a failed effort to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, opposing direct talks with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, lobbying European allies against readmitting Russia into the G-7, and pushing for a military strike on Iran. The national security adviser’s dissent from Trump’s own initiatives had become so frequent that he refused to defend the Trump’s foreign policy on TV. The president “should have people he trusts and values,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly was no longer on speaking terms with Bolton.
Bolton’s ouster had been rumored for months, ever since Trump met Kim in North Korea on June 29 while Bolton visited Mongolia. His exit follows the implosion of a planned peace summit with the Taliban at Camp David. Bolton is said to have incensed others in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, by leaking his vehement—and ultimately successful—opposition to the meeting. Sen. Chuck Schumer called Bolton’s ouster “the latest example” of Trump’s “government-by-chaos approach.”
What the columnists said
“Good riddance,” said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. “By any measure,” Bolton will go down as one of the worst national security advisers in White House history. The notorious hawk favored bombing North Korea, regime change in Iran, and “scuttling every international treaty the U.S. has signed.” He also wrecked the National Security Council, the crucial West Wing apparatus that “provides the president with analysis and options” on foreign policy issues. Bolton preferred to “put forth his own recommendations” based on his hard-line ideology.
America’s enemies are surely delighted at Bolton’s departure, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. During his 17-month tenure, Bolton provided a “rare internal restraint on President Trump’s inconstant and transactional security instincts.” Just consider that his final act as national security adviser was sparing the president the “substantial embarrassment” of engaging the Taliban in talks “on the week of the anniversary of 9/11.” Not “every security issue can be boiled down to a negotiation” or “the art of the deal.”
John Bolton owes this nation one last service, said David Frum in TheAtlantic.com. As a patriot, he must warn his fellow citizens that this president is “unfit for the job—morally, intellectually, psychologically.” He should “tell the truth” about what he saw; “all of it—not just adjectives and conclusions, but the actual details” of Trump’s self-dealing, his “inattention and ignorance,” and the danger he poses to America by remaining in office.