Oh, so now he tells us.
John Bolton is telling us damning stuff about Trump that we already knew – and he’s doing it five months too late. Timing is everything in life and politics, and this guy’s could not be worse.
That’s not to say that the morsels in his long-awaited memoir aren’t worth binging and purging. They most certainly are. Trump, for instance, is so ignorant that he doesn’t know Finland and Russia are separate nations and that Britain is a nuclear power. But we’ve long known that Trump is ignorant.
Trump lacks the skills and character to run a lemonade stand; according to Bolton – veteran conservative, ex-national security adviser, and Fox News contributor – Trump “second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run a White House, let alone the huge federal government.” But we’ve long known that; heck, anyone with half a brain knew that during the ’16 campaign.
Trump sucks up shamelessly to brutal dictators – for instance, by telling Chinese leader Xi Jinping that he should build concentration camps and incarcerate the Muslims who live in a northwest province. And in a reference to Trump’s subservience to Vladimir Putin, Bolton writes that “Putin had to be laughing uproariously at what he had gotten away with” at the infamous Helsinki summit. But we’ve long known that Trump is an authoritarian groupie.
Trump hates free and independent journalists so much that he calls them “scumbags” and believes, according to Bolton, that they should be jailed or even executed for using anonymous sources. But we’ve long known that Trump hates the free and independent press.
Trump’s top aides mercilessly mock him behind his back – like the time, according to Bolton, when Trump was being rolled by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Secretary of State passed Bolton a note critiquing their boss: “He is so full of shit.” Trump’s top aides have questioned his fitness; Bolton quotes chief of Staff John Kelly as saying, “What if we have a real crisis like 9/11 with the way he makes decisions?” But we’ve long known that Trump’s people disparage him as unfit and full of it.
Trump is deeply corrupt, meddling to stop criminal investigations that might hurt him personally or politically; in Bolton’s words, “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life.” But we’ve long known that; back in the day, that’s why he hired mobbed-up lawyer Roy Cohn.
Trump wants foreign leaders to help him win his elections. Bolton saw him “pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” begging the Chinese leader to buy American soybeans and wheat so that Trump could win the farm states in 2020. That’s a milder example of what we learned during last winter’s impeachment probe: Trump twists American foreign policy to serve his personal political needs.
And with respect to that impeachment probe, Bolton has confirmed the damning details of Trump’s illegal behavior toward Ukraine – withholding congressionally-mandated military aid until Ukraine supplied phony political dirt that might help Trump win re-election. According to Bolton, Trump told him that “he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all…materials related to (Hillary) Clinton and (Joe) Biden had been turned over” – and that Trump resisted as many as 10 pleas, from Bolton and Defense chief Mark Esper, to release the military aid.
It would’ve been nice if Bolton had deigned to share his Ukraine memories under oath during the impeachment probe. He could’ve come forward and agreed to testify when the impeachment managers sought his help. But he refused. Instead, he decided to turn a buck by saving it all for his book. Who knows, if he had testified, maybe one or two spineless Senate Republicans might’ve been moved to throw Trump out of office. (Thankfully, the book has been leaked to the press. Now that we know what’s in it, we don’t have to enrich its author.)
And I’m especially loath to buy the book because of this passage: “Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.” But Bolton was best positioned, by dint of his insider status, to help the impeachment probers craft a more sweeping indictment of Trump’s behavior – and yet he refused to help when he was most needed. What a patriot.
There’s an upside, however. Bolton’s memoir feeds fresh ammo to his GOP brethren – at The Lincoln Project, Republican Voters Against Trump, and Right Side PAC – who are working hard to take Trump down. Every little bit helps.
And every time Trump opens his mouth these days, he runs an attack ad against himself. When he was asked yesterday to comment about our 2.1 million confirmed COVID cases (spiking right now in southern and western states) and our 118,000 deaths, here’s what he said:
“If you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out.”
Top that, John Bolton!
All thunder, no lightning. Regardless of the book’s ‘revelations,’ Bolton is little more than an annoyed, narcissistic, right wing ideologue. And that’s no news. He shirked his duty to the country when the opportunity presented itself with his own version of a bone spur. He screwed the country and now wants recognition as a tell-all statesman. Sorry, too little, too late, too self-centered, too self-promoting. Republican House and Senate members don’t give a crap as long as it doesn’t affect their reelection chances; Right wing Trump supporters don’t care because they will regard it as fake news and deep state efforts to sabotage Trump.
Maybe it will influence the minds of the handful of open-minded supporters of Trump, although such a description is an oxymoron. For us, it’s mostly a confirmation of what we already know to be the case, i.e., Trump is a sociopathic moron whose narcissism and poor judgment guide his every move.