The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and the sheer amount of work, and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description—try something else.

Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (“war of all against all”).

Hobbes’s description of human existence as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” accurately described life in the White House,

New threats and opportunities were coming at us rapidly, and eight years of Barack Obama meant there was much to repair.

Other than shrinks and those deeply interested in Sigmund Freud, which I assuredly am not, I don’t really believe my looks played a role in Trump’s thinking. And if they did, God help the country.

“He’s like a one-year-old. Everything is seen through the prism of whether it benefits Donald Trump.”

Given the ensuing, prolonged, almost irrational war between Trump and the intelligence community, I was lucky the Director’s job didn’t come my way.

selections, I was fine staying outside. If only one could say that for the country.

But the White House entirely owned the initial immigration debacles, betraying a lack of transition preparation and internal coordination.

This was almost exactly what I had said, so I had no doubt he was still watching and absorbing Fox News!

By then, Tillerson had reportedly called Trump “a fucking moron,” which he refused to deny flatly.

As a US Agency for International Development alumnus, I supported using US foreign assistance to advance national-security objectives, but I also knew such efforts had their weaknesses as well as strengths.

Trump despised both Bush Presidents and their Administrations, leading me to wonder if he had missed my almost ten years of service in those presidencies. And Trump changed his mind constantly.

“Secretary of State is the best job in the government, and National Security Advisor is the hardest.” I am sure she is right.

Venezuela’s illegitimate regime, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most oppressive, presented the Trump Administration an opportunity. But it required steady determination on our part and consistent, all-out, unrelenting pressure. We failed to meet this standard.

Someday, when Venezuela is free again, the many individuals supporting the Opposition will be free to tell their stories publicly.

America had opposed external threats in the Western Hemisphere since the Monroe Doctrine, and it was time to resurrect it after the Obama-Kerry efforts to bury it.

“Stephen’s more worried about secondary effects on US companies than about the mission,” which was completely accurate.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry was strongly in favor of tough sanctions, sweeping aside Mnuchin’s concerns about the limited US oil-and-gas assets in Venezuela.

Even the Organization of American States, long one of the most moribund international organizations (and that’s saying something), was roused to help Guaidó, as a growing number of Latin American countries stood up to declare support for Venezuela’s defiant National Assembly.

crossed the Rubicon

Trump later added unhelpfully, “I want him to say he will be extremely loyal to the United States and no one else.”

There was also some feeling that defections of this magnitude would bring a significant number of troops with them, with the military units seemingly moving toward the borders, but then doubling back to Caracas to encircle the Miraflores Palace, Venezuela’s White House.

If this wasn’t the stuff of popular uprisings, it was hard to know what would qualify.

That’s not how sanctions should work; they’re about using America’s massive economic power to advance our national interests. They are most effective when applied massively, swiftly, and decisively, and enforced with all the power available.

“Mr. Bolton, it is an honor to count on you as we do”).

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.

Confusing and contradictory reports continued through the morning, a “fog of war” phenomenon in these kinds of events,

All the evidence, in my assessment, showed who was really in charge in Venezuela, namely, the Cubans, who had informed Maduro.

Now was when the effects of bureaucratic foot-dragging became all too evident, and the lack of constancy and resolve in the Oval Office all too apparent.

An unnecessary negative development was Trump’s decision to call Putin on May 23, primarily on other subjects, but including Venezuela at the end. It was a brilliant display of Soviet-style propaganda from Putin, which I thought largely persuaded Trump.

What now stands primarily in the way of freeing Venezuela is the Cuban presence, critically supported by Russian financial resources.

Recriminations after failure are inevitable, and there were plenty to go around, including from Trump directly.

All credit to those who risked their lives in Venezuela to free their countrymen, and shame on those who second-guessed them. Venezuela will be free.

generals were still fighting the last war rather than the current threat.

The real reason sanctions were not as successful as they could have been was not that they were used too frequently but that they were used ineffectively, in both the Trump and Obama Administrations.

The right way to impose sanctions is to do so swiftly and unexpectedly; make them broad and comprehensive, not piecemeal; and enforce them rigorously, using military assets to interdict illicit commerce if necessary.

UN Security Council Resolutions 661, enumerating the sanctions on Iraq, and 665, authorizing the use of military force to carry them out, remain key documents.

advent of the euro created an even more significant competitor.

If America’s economic swords had been sharper during the Trump Administration, we would have accomplished much more.

Energy Department Secretary Rick Perry,

The next Administration should fix Mnuchin’s approach immediately so everyone will be on notice that sanctions are an economic weapon we will use effectively, not something we feel guilty about deploying.

Pompeo briefed Trump on his recent visit to Iraq, which inevitably kick-started Trump into enumerating the Bush 43 Administration’s errors: “Worst President we ever had,” said Trump.

As long as Trump is President, and probably thereafter, he will search for a lawyer willing to prosecute Kerry. If I were Kerry, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Back to reality,

By this time, even Democrats were starting to worry that the magnitude and tempo of Iran’s threat was growing unacceptably. Public

What I heard next was shocking, but I distinctly remember hearing him say “I don’t care if ISIS comes back into Iraq.”

I thought Iran was doing a better job trolling Trump than he was doing in return.

I left for London as discouraged as during the Obama years when one Middle East leader after another would ask why Obama thought the ayatollahs would ever voluntarily give up terrorism or nuclear weapons.

What the rest of the world made of our disarray and confusion was less certain, because for the moment, courtesy of the New York Times and others,30 the media were focusing on the split between Trump and me on North Korea and Iran. The bigger picture was the split between Trump and Trump.

Trump had begun losing interest, saying, “Let’s go to the ‘what do you want to do?’ page.”