The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

“How stupid is this?” Trump asked. “Germany doesn’t spend on neighboring countries. Angela says, ‘We don’t spend because it’s a neighboring country.’10 John, do you agree on Ukraine?” I didn’t answer directly, worrying about what had suddenly made Trump pay attention to this particular military assistance. Instead, I suggested that Esper raise all these questions about NATO and Ukraine burden-sharing at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting scheduled in the coming days. This was likely the first time I heard security assistance to Ukraine called into question, but the real issue was how Trump found out about it, and who came up with the idea to use it as leverage against Zelensky and his new government. I never learned the answers to these questions, but Mulvaney, in his continuing capacity as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, was certainly one possible source. The key point that I carried away from this conversation was that the Ukraine security assistance was at risk of being swallowed by the Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories.