The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

Pence also pressed Trump to meet Zelensky at the UN General Assembly and said that “just between us girls,” he thought Trump was looking for a news peg to make what we hoped was the right decision. “Zelensky didn’t quite close the argument [in their meeting], so I closed it for him,” said Pence, which sounded positive. In the meantime, the press was beginning to sniff out the connection between withholding military assistance for Ukraine and Trump’s obsession with the 2016 and 2020 elections in the persons of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.19 Bipartisan Hill opposition to withholding the aid continued to rise (which, all else failing, I hoped would produce the right result). It was not until the end of September, however, that the media began to appreciate what had been happening since well before the July 25 call.20