JOHN BOLTON READS THE EPILOGUE!
As President Trumpâs National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.
The result is a âscathing and revelatoryâ (The New Yorker) White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. âI am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasnât driven by reelection calculations,â he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trumpâs Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policyâand Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.
He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Boltonâs telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. âThe differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,â writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate dealâabout personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
Boltonâs âfirst tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking officialâ (The New York Times) starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syriaâs chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, âIf you donât like turmoil, uncertainty, and riskâall the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of workâand enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.â
The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all thereâfrom the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Koreaâs Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
Jan
2020-07-05
Diar
2020-07-04
Görel
2020-07-02