The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

cannot offer a comprehensive theory of the Trump Administration’s transformation because none is possible. Washington’s conventional wisdom on Trump’s trajectory, however, is wrong. This received truth, attractive to the intellectually lazy, is that Trump was always bizarre, but in his first fifteen months, uncertain in his new place, and held in check by an “axis of adults,” he hesitated to act. As time passed, however, Trump became more certain of himself, the axis of adults departed, things fell apart, and Trump was surrounded only by “yes men.”

I had long felt that the role of the National Security Advisor was to ensure that a President understood what options were open to him for any given decision he needed to make, and then to ensure that this decision was carried out by the pertinent bureaucracies. The National Security Council process was certain to be different for different Presidents, but these were the critical objectives the process should achieve.

No question common practice in all recent administrations before Trump.

Executive Branch and establish national-security policies on instinct, relying on personal relationships with foreign leaders, and with made-for-television showmanship always top of mind. Now, instinct, personal relations, and showmanship are elements of any President’s repertoire. But they are not all of it, by a long stretch.

Trump and most of his team never read the government’s “operators’ manual,” perhaps not realizing doing so wouldn’t automatically make them members of the “deep state.”

What do you mean Trump didn't read anything put before him.

In early visits to the West Wing, the differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning. What happened on one day on a particular issue often had little resemblance to what happened the next day, or the day after. Few seemed to realize it, care about it, or have any interest in fixing it. And it wasn’t going to get much better, which depressing but inescapable conclusion I reached only after I had joined the Administration.

The transition’s spreading disorder increasingly reflected not just organizational failures but Trump’s essential decision-making style. Charles Krauthammer, a sharp critic of his, told me he had been wrong earlier to characterize Trump’s behavior as that of an eleven-year-old boy. “I was off by ten years,” Krauthammer remarked. “He’s like a one-year-old. Everything is seen through the prism of whether it benefits Donald Trump.” That was certainly the way the personnel-selection process appeared from the outside. As one Republican strategist told me, the best way to become Secretary of State was to “try to be the last man standing.”

In four years Trump still acts as a juvenile.

“Yes, but even there, we agree that Obama’s withdrawal of American forces in 2011 led us to the mess we have there now.”

How quickly they forgot the circumstances of 2011. WE WEREN'T WANTED ANYMORE and were asked to leave!! I vividly remember this period.

The deal was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope. Although purportedly resolving the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the deal did no such thing. In fact, it exacerbated the threat by creating the semblance of a solution, diverting attention from the dangers, and lifting the economic sanctions that had imposed substantial pain on Iran’s economy, while allowing Tehran to proceed essentially unimpeded. Moreover, the deal did not seriously address other threats

Bolton has no idea what nhes talking about. if Bolton was in charge there would be no agreement but instead a war with Iran and who knows who else in the middle east and beyond.

The Paris Agreement was a charade, for those truly concerned about climate change.

Are you kidding me. Bolton is just so niave.

explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang’s artillery north of the DMZ, which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn’t act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force.

This is exactly why Bolten is so dangerous could you even im.agi ne the millions of desths that would result. A crazy crazy man!

South Korea’s left worshipped this “Sunshine Policy,” which basically held that being nice to North Korea would bring peace to the Peninsula. Instead, again and again, it merely subsidized the North’s dictatorship.

Bolton, like you knosw more then the S Koreans give me a break.

After a brief discussion, with just the two of us in his office, Kelly said, “You can’t imagine how desperate I am to get out of here. This is a bad place to work, as you will find out.” He was the first to see Trump in the morning and the last to see him at night, and I could only conjecture how many mistakes he had prevented during his tenure.

No surprise.

Shortly thereafter, I asked Kelly why Trump was complaining, and Kelly said, “That’s easy. He’s worried you’re going to upstage him.” This would sound preposterous for any President other than Trump, and while it was flattering, if true, it was also dangerous.

Trump and his ego, always afraid someone will upstage him.

“Isn’t Finland kind of a satellite of Russia?” he asked. (Later that same morning, Trump asked Kelly if Finland was part of Russia.) I tried to explain the history but didn’t get very far before Trump said he too wanted Vienna.

Are you kidding me. What an idiot.

Under President Clinton, America suffered its own military declines, as he and others saw the collapse of Communism as “the end of history,” slashing defense budgets to spend on politically beneficial domestic welfare programs.

Bolton, very convenient to blame Clinton. actually welfare spending dropped under the Clinton.adminstration.

We should have been doing far more to help the Brexiteers, and I certainly tried. Unfortunately, apart from Trump and myself, almost no one in the Administration seemed to care. What a potential tragedy.

John, thank goodness no-one listened to you. Brexit has been an utter disaster for GB.

The agreement simply requires signatories to set national goals but doesn’t say what those goals should be, nor does it contain enforcement mechanisms. This is theology masquerading as policy, an increasingly common phenomenon in international affairs.

Ya, shoot it down yet as usual John Bolton has no alternative to the Paris accord.

The base wants out. My people are very smart, it’s why [Dean] Heller lost [his Nevada Senate reelection bid]. He supported Hillary.”

He only cares about his base, and could care less about everyone else. What about doing whats right for the rest of the country.

it was, Trump generally had only two intelligence briefings per week, and in most of those, he spoke at greater length than the briefers, often on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand.

Dosen't care what others have to say or offer. another trait of a poor leader.

Now, Brennan was no prize, and during his tenure the CIA became more politicized than at any other time in its history.

What do mean? Go ahead and throw out a dig.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’ ”

The Pentagon would have to begin at square one, because under the Obama Administration, Secretary of State John Kerry had announced the end of the Monroe Doctrine,15 a mistake that had reverberated through all of the national security departments and agencies with predictable effects.

In your opinion a mistake but to most in foreign policy this is a good thing.

And because of Obama’s relaxed attitude about authoritarian regimes and Chinese and Russian threats in the hemisphere, our eyes and ears were already substantially reduced.

What an out right lie. Bolton is so cavalier with his anto Obama statements

He thought Guaidó was “weak,” as opposed to Maduro, who was “strong.” By spring, Trump was calling Guaidó the “Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela,” hardly the sort of compliment an ally of the United States should expect. It was far from helpful but typical of how Trump carelessly defamed those around him, as when he began blaming me for the opposition’s failure to overthrow Maduro. Perhaps Trump forgot he made the actual decision on policy, except when he said he was the only one who made decisions.

The Obama Administration basically sat back and watched it happen.

Again, John Bolton has his facts mixed up.

Trump frequently says explicitly that stopping China’s unfair economic growth at US expense is the best way to defeat China militarily, which is fundamentally correct.

Naive, naive, a ridiculous statement .

When had we started to worry about jobs in China?

John, we should be worried about jobs globally. isolationism is the real problem.

Trump raised Meng’s arrest, riffing about how much pressure this put on China. He said to me across the table that we had just arrested “the Ivanka Trump of China.” I came within an inch of saying, “I never knew Ivanka was a spy and a fraudster,” but my automatic tongue-biting mechanism kicked in just in time.

The reorganized directorates performed perfectly well, as I had fully expected. In real-world terms, the renewed Ebola outbreaks in the eastern Congo and nearby areas in 2018–19 were handled with great skill across the interagency process.

It now obvious Bolton's NSC changes were a disaster given our national and global response to Covid.

Or will he conclude that no deal with Trump is possible and that he would be better served waiting to see whether a pliant Democrat with even less foreign-policy experience than Trump emerges as President?

Thankfully that won't be a problem.

Moreover, he pointed out, given America’s enhanced role as an oil producer, rising oil prices actually boosted US GDP, even if higher consumer prices had corresponding negative effects. Overall, for us, it was basically a wash economically.

Yes John tell that to those who depend on their cars for their income. $3 and $4 a gallon for gas puts real hardship on Americans. Obviously you could care less.

Had we hard-liners persuaded Trump to bear down on Mnuchin, we would have seen even more dramatic economic decline in Iran, but that was not to be.

john Bolton loves his weak assumptions.

Of course, neither Putin nor Rouhani had made any effort to contact us, and to the extent Zarif and others spoke to the media, they were playing to Trump’s vanities.

Trump repeated one of his hobbyhorses, namely that it was cheaper to rebuild the World Trade Center than to fight in Afghanistan, inconveniently ignoring the loss of life in the 9/11 attacks, not just the cost of rebuilding. It also ignored the reality that a Trump withdrawal, followed by a terrorist attack, would be devastating politically.

This also provides a good insight into Trumps perverted way of thinking