The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

The meeting began shortly after three p.m., with Pompeo saying, “We are not quite done with the Taliban,” but then laying out the broad terms of a deal that sounded almost done. This description contrasted sharply with what Pompeo had said to me on the phone earlier that day. Trump asked questions, especially about one provision for an exchange of prisoners and hostages between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which in numerical terms looked a lot more favorable to the Taliban than to us. Trump didn’t like that at all. Then Trump began riffing about Afghan President Ghani and his elaborate house in Dubai, which we knew from actual research Ghani didn’t own. But no matter, because Pompeo pointed out the reality that Ghani was now President and controlled the government’s armed forces. Completely predictably, Trump asked, “Who pays them?” Esper, new to this movie script, promptly responded, “We do,” thereby launching Trump into the riff about how Mattis always said, “These soldiers are fighting bravely for their country,” until Trump asked who paid for them, and found out the total cost (including equipment and other supplies) was about $6.5 billion annually. “They are the most highly paid soldiers in the world,” Trump concluded. Then he was off on “green-on-blue” attacks, where Afghan government soldiers attacked US forces: “We teach them how to shoot, and then they take the weapons and say, ‘Oh, thank you, sir,’ and then kill our guys.” Then we were off to the Afghan...