I have just finished reading ‘The Room Where it Happened’ … the story of John Bolton’s tenure as Trump’s National Security Advisor before he resigned. It is a weighty tome … 494 pages supported by extensive notes.
Bolton paints a picture of a wasted transitional period leading to an almost totally dysfunctional White House where policy was made and unmade on the whim of a President who didn’t ‘do’ mornings, didn’t read his briefing books, and who allowed foreign Heads of State (especially KIim Jong Un) to play him like a piano, appealing to his vanity in order to extract concessions from him. I was particularly fascinated to read the detail behind Trump’s abortive attempt to bring the Talaban to Camp David for one-on-one discussions three prior to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by al-Queda to which the Talaban had given aid and comfort. When it all went tits up and Trump was assailed by Republicans and Democrats alike he went ape on everyone forgetting he was the driving force behind the initiative opposed by every organ of State. His dealings with Iran (and many other countries) were characterised by the same muddled thinking.
Fascinating too how Trump allowed Jared Kushner, his son-in-law to conduct negotiations with Heads of State on sensitive matters unbeknown to the State or Defence Departments or to Bolton. Kushner answered to no-one except Trump.
I’ll leave this by quoting a conversation between Bolton and Charles Krauthammer (respected Fox News commentator). He told Bolton that he had been wrong when he earlier characterised Trump’s behavior as that of an eleven year old … ‘I was off by ten years’ he said.
Before you rush to judgement read the book and then make up your mind.
Ambassador Bolton is a distinguished American albeit of the conservative, old-school right. He served as the United States Ambassador to the UN 2005-2006 and before that held high level positions in the Reagan, George HW Bush and George Bush Administrations. He was Trump’s National Security Adviser April 2018 to September 2019 before he resigned.
No Minister 
Quelle surprise – a Neocon who wants to bomb just about everywhere with non European inhabitants who don’t speak English into the stone age has written a book to provide red meat for those who suffer from TDS
You might not have noticed but DT didn’t start any new wars, pacified the ME and calmed Kim Jong Un down
Gasoline was cheaper at the end of his tenure than at any time since 2000 – I was paying $1.91/L in January for 95 octane, its about $2:30 today I think
Why do you think that is Vet?
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
Have you read the book Andrei … just askin.
Did you watch President Trump’s speech in North Carolina today… just askin.
Why would I read such a dreary tome – nearly 500 pages of self justification written for political reasons to undermine the Presidential campaign of a candidate the author held a grudge against.
A plethora of such books are published every election cycle and then quickly forgotten
Yep, Andy the Russian Troll, I watched Trump’s “speech”. FFS, he made Biden look positively statesman like.
Vet I suggest you start looking below the John Bolton surface before you start using him as your anti Trump weapon.
Its a bit like taking a book written by Wayne about his John Key years. Wayne had 3 law degrees but ended up as the Minister of a very minor Govt Dept called Defence who cant even work out a scheme to fire off their old ammunition before it became dated…Wayne seemed to find this a mystery,
Bolton is damaged goods, a Yale lawyer, 1 year appointment to the UN as ambassador in 2007, lasted about a year with Trump.
Trump described him as a “dolt whose thirst for military confrontation overwhelmed all other strategic considerations”
I laughed when Bolton described Trump as not a morning person…really half the population including Winston Churchill are not morning people.
I dont need to read his book, there are plenty of self serving, its all about me books, in the same vain.
Its a real shame that in the Trump years peace broke out in the Middle East, something you aspire to add little or no weight to but Bolton must have hated.
I can agree with some of the assessments of Bolton, especially his love of bombing brown people. However, that does not mean his insights into Trumpism can be ignored.
just look at Trump’s latest moronic brain fart – that the “election audits” will find the votes he needs and he’ll be sworn in as POTUS in August. Funny dat, because the US Constitution does not provide a mechanism for that. Even IF Trump could “find” another 10 million votes for him, the election is over, the electoral college has spoken and that’s the end of it.
Impeachment is the only way to remove Biden, and even IF that were to occur, it still wouldn’t make Trump POTUS.
This news brought to you by the same MSM who reported as fact:
– the contents of the Steele dossier that “proved” Russian collusion.
– the suckers and losers “quotes” (denied by Bolton incidently)
– the Russian Bounty bullshit
– the “quotes” about the Georgia phone call (later admitted as mere paraphrasing by a single source – who was then used by all other MSM’s as they “confirmed” the stories.
– Officer Sicknick’s “murder”
– The Lab Leak theory as a conspiracy theory – according to experts.
… and on and on and on.
I understand why Lefties like “Little Dorrit” and NeverTrumpers believed all the above (some still do), but there’s no reason for rational people to continue to give credence to an MSM that reported all the above as fact, when they come out with yet another Trump “bombshell” of what he has supposedly “said” (via impeccable sources natch).
I have an awful lot of books to get through this winter but will try to borrow Bolton’s account.
I admired Bolton for sticking up for the USA in the UN and in other forums, particularly against the ICC.
I also have no doubt that Trump’s decision making was chaotic, given that he had spent his entire life as the boss of his own world. Being a President was always going to be very different and he never understood Truman’s old maxim that just because a President gives an order does not mean it is going to be performed by the vast bureaucracy under his command.
But here’s the thing: the highly educated and credentialed “experts” of the State Department, the Pentagon and the Intelligence agencies, people like Bolton, have had a series of colossal misses over the last forty years:
The Iranian revolution
The collapse of the Warsaw pact and the USSR (okay, after 1989 you could start predicting the end of the latter but by then it was easy).
Iraq invading Kuwait
Blackhawk Down
9/11
Iraq War and the WMDs
Libya
There are only two solid successes I can think of in this period. First was the handling of the Warsaw Pact/USSR collapse once they realised it was underway: that was delicate and done well by GHW Bush. Second, the recovery from the Kuwait invasion to Desert Storm, but that was down to execution with a military still cued up from the Cold War.
Also what does Bolton think of Biden pulling the troops from Afghanistan now? He must still be opposed to that, which makes him almost a lone voice. Fortunately the same people who tried to sabotage Trump’s effort last year now realise they have nowhere else to go – and negotiations with the Taliban have to be part of the process. Once the US troops are gone they’ll break any agreement of course, exactly as the North Vietnamese did in 1975, because of their ultimate objective.
But whether it’s Trump or Biden that was always going to happen. Bolton apparently believes that US troops should continue to stay there, even after twenty years of effort have failed to deliver on his Neo-Conservative dream of a stable Afghanistan that “loves freedom”.
Special mention should also be given to Bolton’s February 2018 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where he argued that Kim’s regime would soon be able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons, and that the USA should attack before it was too late:
How does that sort of thinking and advice stack up in comparison to Trump being “played” by the North Korean dictator? Does that sound like stable advice? Sober? Thoughtful? Sound? Clever? Smart?
Funnily enough it’s none other than Obama security advisor Rhodes who gave the best reason for Jared Kushner to exclude such experts; Rhodes called the above groups “The Blob” and lambasted them for their mistakes and arrogance.
I predict that the Abraham Accords crafted by Kushner and a few others, will hold up well over the next few years.
Wrong as usual, that is a NYT brain fart in a hit piece – as the informed know(i.e. those who do not use the NYT or watch CNN for their information) when the people vote in Presidential Elections they are voting for the electors who will choose the next President. By convention the electors vote for the candidate chiosen by the people at the ballot box But they are not obliged to! Electors who go against the popular vote in their State are known as “Faithless Electors”
But what this means to those of us with more than two functional brain cells is that Joe Biden is the legitimate President of the USA despite the election being stolen
The purpose of the Audits is to expose the rot and hopefully allow the American people to take back their Nation from, the pack of degenerates and scoundrels who a currently wrecking and to do so at the at the ballot box
And if they don’t succeed in regaining their democratic birth right the USA is finished
Its not looking good for the USA if Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco etc. are harbingers of the future
Tom’s 11.13 comment is at least a thinking comment … as opposed to some others. Back in 2016 I applauded Trump’s victory but from that moment on it was all down hill. If the Republican Party is stupid enough to make Trump their 2024 Presidential nominee (assuming he remains unindicted) then that will guarantee the Democrats (Biden or Harris) another four years in the White House.
Trump is fatally flawed, unstable and entirely focused on whats best for him personally rather than what’s best for America. I’ll take Bolton’s version of events; I’ll take Trump’s sister’s assessment of his character over the rose coloured spectacle version of Trump promoted by Trumpists any day.
Andrei … care to articulate for me the way forward, provided for in the Constitution, for Trump to be sworn in as POTUS by in less than 90 days.
Perhaps you share the views of Trump’s (resigned) former National Security Advisor, Marine General Michael Flynn, who said just a few days ago at a Pro Trump rally in Dallas, Texas and in answer to a question as to why the military coup in Myanmar should not happen here said ‘There’s no reason’ and then to the cheering audience ‘I mean it should happen – that’s right’. Goes to show how just unhinged many of Trump’s supporters. The only good thing to come out of this are the calls for Flynn to be recalled to active duty and court-martialed for sedition.
Outcomes, Vet, outcomes.
As several GOP folk were pointing out by 2018, much to their own surprise, Trump had actually delivered on a number of items that the NeverTrumpers had been demanding from Republican Presidents for years and never got.
And he could have got more had the useless GOP mongs who had House and Senate majorities actually acted like it. Bloody Paul Ryan – who I appreciated for his 2010 policy wonk dismantling of Obamacare in front of an annoyed Obama – turned out to be a hopeless squish once he became House Speaker. Just one example of this was passing not one but two gargantuan budgets stuffed with Democrat goodies in the name of bipartisanship. It was such a joke that Pelosi and Schumer were publicly taunting him about it.
But he just carried on like he had OCD, blabbing about how these actions would clear out all the rubbish stuff before they all got down to some really serious, fundamental spending changes. But by then his two years were up and GOP voters decided that 2010 had been a waste of time and gave up, handing power back to Pelosi.
And now he’s lecturing the GOP on how to “win” and defend “Conservative principals”? What did he actually defend in his time? Tax cuts? Ryan and company winning looked a lot like losing.
It’s not enough. The US Right wing is done with useless people like Ryan and Romney. Whether we’ve reached that stage yet in NZ or ever will I do not know but the alternative will be to keep piddling along as we are because that’s good enough.
Now where’s my Pinot Noir on this cold, wet Winter’s day.
Vet. I’ve seen a legal opinion which suggests President Trump could be reinstated under a combination of the US constitution and British common law. So, it might not be as crazy as you think.
“One of the core principles of common law is that agreements that result from fraud are void ab initio. In other words, fraud means that an agreement never existed in the first place. Everything that flows from the fraud is done away with, and matters are returned to the status quo ante — that is, the place at which they were before the fraud began.
If one applies this theory to the Constitution’s rules for election, which are nothing more than an agreement between the government and the people, and if the various election audits show that fraudulent elections led several states to certify Biden as the winner, one doesn’t need a “Reinstatement Clause” in the Constitution to right the wrong done to America. Good old British common law is more than enough to say the election result was void ab initio and that America needs to return to the status quo ante preceding Biden’s inauguration. There’s nothing radical about this. It’s just the law…”
There is no “way forward” for Donald Trump to be sworn in as President in 90 days or any time before 2025.
The Presidential succession is clearly spelled out in the US constitution and Donald Trump is not in the line of succession.
It cannot happen so there is no point hyperventilating about it.
And Donald Trump and his lawyers know this FFS.
The 2020 election was the most fraudulent in US history – it make elections in Mexico look like paragons of integrity by contrast and now the USA is in the hands of a corrupt gerontocracy but there is nothing that can be done about it under the Constitution
The way forward is to expose the cheating that went on and make sure this cannot happen again
And if this doesn’t happen the eventual outcome will be a civil war, which is actually looking quite likely, the indicators are there.
The current Union of States that makes up the USA is not going to last forever.
Just when it will all unravel is indeterminate but it will sooner or later and perhaps history will record the beginning of the dissolution of the USA was the fraudulent 2020 Presidential election, who knows?
@adolffinkensen
Nope! Not a shitshow in hell. Less chance than catching Chinese Sinus Rot from a someone whose had the disease or the vaccine.
Legal opinions are like assholes; everybody’s got one, and there’s nothing worse than a lawyer expressing an opinion before they have to step into the courtroom. I’ve known more than a few people who ended up out of pocket because they went ahead with a court case on the basis of one lawyer’s opinion.
Oh, I think better than a shit’s show in Hell.
Just imagine what a politicized supreme court would do with it if a negative decision meant civil war.
Why, they have the perfect precedent in the Derek Chauvin case.
Laugh my arse off. The Dems deserve every cubic yard of shit which falls on their heads.
Andrei … re your 2.23. Agreed except for the bit about Trump and his lawyers knowing that. Trump has never accepted the legitimacy of the election result and all his actions since then have been directed at reinforcing that narrative. Goes to prove the old adage … show me a sore loser and I’ll show you a loser.
Vet. What are you going to do when the audits show the scale of this massive fraud?
Trump’s lawyers have publicly stated as much Vet. The idea that Trump thinks the result is going to be ir could be overturned is a beat up
The President of the USA is chosen by the electors appointed by the State Legislators. Each State gets an elector for each senator (that’s two ) plus one for each congressional district
There are variations between states as to how these electors are supposed to vote but in the majority of States all the votes are given to the highest polling Presidential candidate in that state
If an elector does not vote for the candidate they are supposed to the result stands. A Trump elector could in theory give his/her vote to Biden and that would stand. This has happened occasionally in the past but has not effected the final result this far
And therein lies the reason that Biden is the legitimate President regardless of any fraud. The State legislators sent the electors votes to Congress on Jan 6 and they were counted, It is a done deal and cannot be changed.
But that doesn’t alter the fact the election was totally fraudulent and the result dishonest
And this is a very bad sign for the future of the Republic – If the electoral processes are not fixed and the very real problems with them addressed the end result will be tyranny, civil war or both
Not That I claim to know much about US politics but one souce I saw mentioned this as a possible scenario.
The audits prove a massive fraud has been perpetrated.
The US armed forces confirm that President Trump, given the fraud, is still the US Spreme Commander.
Interesting scenario
That would be a military coup Rossco, the cure would be worse than the disease and it wont happen or if it did the USA would descend into civil war
Andrei, maybe such a military coup might be good thing if it prevented a civil war. Fiji did pretty well under Commodore Bainimarama.
A presidential election overseen by the military would give the Democrats a serious bout of the shits.
Andrei Would it though? You look at the voting patterns.
East and West extremes voted Democrats, middle America voted Trump, except for the possibly “technically adjusted states” like Georgia et al who were going Trump till about 2 am in the morning.
Would there be a civil war or would there be a sigh of relief realising what has been inflicted on them by the dark under state….. Biden and Harris, woeful in the extreme!
I mean to say the American military is very conservative, and more than likely voted Trump. I’m sure given the defund the police movement would result in the police supporting Trump, middle America has an F150 with a gun rack in every cab. if the fraud proved true it would be explosive politically.
Its not beyond the the realm of possibility, after all did the Democrats have Kennedy assassinated because of his radicalism?
Sleep tight…dreams do come true.