John Bolton rips Trump in new edition of memoir

Former national security adviser John Bolton dug into former President Trump in the new edition of his memoir, warning that the former president is a selfish man focused on the retribution of his enemies, according to multiple media reports.

Bolton, who was once an ally of Trump and served in his White House in 2018 and 2019, emerged as a prominent critic since leaving the administration.

Bolton released a new foreword to his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” on Tuesday. In it, he argued the former president is “unfit” to be the nation’s commander, Reuters reported.

Speaking with ABC News’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday morning, Bolton said his new foreword lays out how a second term for Trump will be “worse” than his first term.

“I think if you look at what Trump did in his first term — which I try and describe in the original book — you can extrapolate from that what a second term will be like, and basically it will be the same except worse,” Bolton told George Stephanopoulos.

“All of the things that he did that rendered his presidency dangerous then are going to be even more pronounced in the second term,” Bolton said.

Bolton said the new edition discusses how Trump has said himself he is looking for “retribution” against the political figures and groups who he believes have wronged him in the past.

“So how he will use the Justice Department, the Defense Department and other agencies of government, I think is a real concern for the people involved. Like myself, he tried to suppress my book, and I describe that so people can get a sense of how he will abuse the Justice Department, what he will do in foreign policy … since he has no philosophy and he doesn’t do policymaking in any coherent sense as we understand it. It will be another random walk for America and very, very dangerous,” Bolton continued, using Trump’s potential withdrawal from the NATO alliance as an example.

He claimed in his memoir that Trump spread an “isolationist virus” through the Republican Party and that “in no arena … has the Trump aberration been more destructive than in national security,” per Reuters. He also warned it is “almost inevitable” that Trump’s policy on Ukraine would “favor Moscow” if he is reelected.

“Indeed, it is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping, who would be happiest to see Trump back in office,” he wrote, per Axios.

Bolton’s writing reportedly revealed Trump “cares almost exclusively about his own interests despite the burdens of the Oval Office,” Reuters added.

“The gravity of the responsibilities Trump had, the impact of the decisions any American president makes in the national security field would discipline him, as it did every other prior president, and help bring us more coherent policy,” Bolton told Stephanopoulos. “And we were all wrong. Trump is immune to all of that, and that’s … one of the real reasons he’s dangerous.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller told both Axios and Reuters, “For someone who professes to have such great disdain for President Trump, ‘Book Deal Bolton’ sure has found a way to grift off the relationship.”

President Biden’s reelection campaign called Trump “dangerous” Tuesday and highlighted the new edition’s release.

“Donald Trump’s own National Security Advisor issued a stark warning about a second Trump presidency: Americans at home and abroad will be less safe under Trump. He’s already spent four years alienating our allies, cozying up to dictators, and was literally laughed at on the world stage,” Ammar Moussa, spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said.

The Hill reached out to Trump’s campaign for further comment.

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