Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton paints a bleak picture of a second Trump term in his updated memoir.
In a new edition of his memoir published on Tuesday, John Bolton, the former U.S. National Security Adviser, denounced former President Donald Trump as a self-interested leader who would harm his personal foes and favor his rivals Russia and China.
Bolton, who worked in Trump’s White House from 2018 to 2019, criticized the Republican presidential frontrunner for lacking a clear political vision or a consistent policy approach. He cautioned that Trump could abandon the NATO security alliance, reduce support to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s 2022 invasion, encourage China to isolate Taiwan and adopt isolationism, if he wins a second term.
“Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton stated in the new introduction to “The Room Where it Happened,” his memoir of the 17 months he served as Trump’s national security adviser. “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”
Bolton challenged Trump’s self-image as a defender of the oppressed, recalling that he once said “for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” Bolton claimed that Trump is mainly concerned about his own vengeance. “Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term,” he wrote in the introduction to the paperback edition of his memoir, which depicted a grim scenario of America during a second Trump term.
Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “For someone who professes to have such great disdain for President Trump, ‘Book Deal Bolton’ sure has found a way to grift off the relationship”.
Bolton admitted that he had hoped that the responsibilities of office would restrain Trump before he joined his administration. However, he discovered that the former president was driven by self-interest. “He cares almost exclusively about his own interests,” Bolton wrote, implying that Trump would prefer to have “a White House of serfs” who would obey his commands without question.
He also argued that Trump, who is praised by the right for nominating Supreme Court justices who overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that affirmed women’s constitutional right to abortion, might not follow conservative policies if re-elected.
Bolton said that Trump’s inability to run for a third term under the U.S. Constitution means “the political constraints around him are much looser, and the real ‘guardrail’ of voter opinion will be minimized.”
Bolton reserved some of his most severe words for foreign policy, writing that Trump spread an “isolationist virus” through the Republican party and that “in no arena … has the Trump aberration been more destructive than in national security.”
He also warned that Trump could pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a move that would delight Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that “it is almost inevitable that a second-term Trump policy on Ukraine will favor Moscow.”
Bolton added that Taiwan and other countries near China’s borders “face real peril in a second Trump term,” suggesting that the chances of China under President Xi Jinping creating a crisis over Taiwan – possibly by blockading the island – would increase.
“It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping who would be happiest to see Trump back in office,” he wrote.
