You just thought Trump's White House was chaotic. Readers, not only was it chaotic, but John Bolton is here to tell you it was lots more than that!
I may not agree with the author's politics, but I can sure laugh at his anecdotes from his short (17 months) tenure in the Wild House. It's nothing short of rockhouse madness.
Bolton must have carried a secret microphone/recorder inside his breast pocket for his recollections of so many fine details of the day-to-day chaos in Trumpland, described in The Room Where It Happened.
I detected no conceit, no self-applause, no boastings in his memoir. When Trump complimented Bolton's "'troika of tyranny'" speech, Bolton reminded him that one of the president's own speechwriters had written it (p. 249).
Bolton's snide comments ricochet throughout the book; some of the highlights:
He writes more than once: "You couldn't make this up" referring to the daily frenzy engulfing the administration (258).
His background on Venezuela and the Middle East makes all those WAPO editorials easier to understand.
"God only knew who he [Trump] was talking to or whether he had just gotten a case of the vapors* because things were still uncertain."
After an attack in the Gulf of Oman, Trump believed "that if you pretended bad things hadn't happened, perhaps no one else would notice" (392).
("I found these weekly trade meetings so chaotic I largely left them for {Charles} Kupperman to attend, which punishment he didn't deserve, but life is hard" (460).) Kupperman was the deputy national security advisor.
At the G20 trade summit in Buenos Aires, no one knew "from one minute to the next" what Trump would say. He envied Xi Jinping's lifelong term as Chinese ruler and told Xi, "that people" in the U.S. were clamoring for an end to the president's two-term limit.
Writes Bolton: "I was aware of no such chatter" (297).
Bolton didn't like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin too much.
At the G20, Bolton writes Mnuchin spent the day "beavering" with China's #3 man, Liu He (296). After all, Mnuchin was a "panda hugger"(290).
Munchin got all excited at China's agreement to purchase more soybeans "just as if we were a Third World commodity supplier to the Middle Kingdom" (297).
During the Venezuelan revolution, Mnuchin worried about the banking sector and the risk to credit card companies. Bolton reminded him that the thousands protesting in the streets, "the poorest people" did not have, nor were they "thinking about Visa and Mastercard!" (269).
Bolton was only too happy to announce to principals that he thought "Treasury was not entitled to its own foreign policy" like Mnuchin desired (273).
Mnuchin spent so much time in the White House, on presidential trips and in California ("who for some reason was in California again" (258)*) that they "'hardly recognize him in his building,' said [John] Kelly disdainfully" (241).
Mnuchnin, was "basically a Democrat" who maintained "his campaign for doing nothing" (252).
Bolton was not a big fan of Defense Secretary James Mattis either whom he continually portrays as a cry baby.
If "his view didn't prevail, which was standard operating procedure for him: stress that timing was urgent, which is what Mattis said when it suited him, and predict doom and gloom if he didn't get his way" (176). "Mattis obstructionism at work" (190) ....Trump never liked him either: "a Democrat."
Preparing for the meeting with Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Bolton worried about the "daily explosions everyone became inured to in the Trump White House."
Bolton says another Trump-Kim Jong Um summit looked "depressingly inescapable" for Trump was hot-to-trot and get a deal done with Kim. It was not to be.
With his good buddy, Shinzo Abe of Japan, Trump lamented the fact that Abe's father was unsuccessful as a World War II kamikaze pilot, forgetting that, had his father achieved his goal, there would have been no good buddy Abe, born after the war. "Mere historical details." says Bolton (345).
Remember the columnist, Charles Krauthammer (1950 - 2018)? Not a Trump fan. He told Bolton he'd been wrong to characterize Trump as an 11-year-old: "'I was off by ten years'" (8).
While leaving the White House after his job interview, Bolton writes he felt like he was in a college dorm, with people going in and out doors. Wasn't there a crisis underway to try and repeal Obamacare? Bolton didn't recognize the place (18).
At the Trumps' first state ceremony with French President Emmanuel and Mrs. Macron: "Sadly for the press, nothing went wrong" (68).
Bolton says another Trump-Kim Jong Um summit looked "depressingly inescapable" for Trump was hot-to-trot and get a deal done with Kim. It was not to be.
With his good buddy, Shinzo Abe of Japan, Trump lamented the fact that Abe's father was unsuccessful as a World War II kamikaze pilot, forgetting that, had his father achieved his goal, there would have been no good buddy Abe, born after the war. "Mere historical details." says Bolton (345).
Remember the columnist, Charles Krauthammer (1950 - 2018)? Not a Trump fan. He told Bolton he'd been wrong to characterize Trump as an 11-year-old: "'I was off by ten years'" (8).
While leaving the White House after his job interview, Bolton writes he felt like he was in a college dorm, with people going in and out doors. Wasn't there a crisis underway to try and repeal Obamacare? Bolton didn't recognize the place (18).
At the Trumps' first state ceremony with French President Emmanuel and Mrs. Macron: "Sadly for the press, nothing went wrong" (68).
"Later, the black-tie state dinner was very nice, if you like eating until 10:30" p.m. With the John Kellys, the Boltons skipped the after-dinner entertainment and went home (70).
At Trump's Turnberry* Scottish golf resort, Greenpeace* breached security by flying an "ungainly contraption," akin to a "a bicycle with wings" hauling a flowing banner which said Trump was "below par." The Secret Service hustled Trump and later, Bolton and Kelly, inside before anyone could look at it too long, although Bolton wanted to prolong his viewing.
On a visit to London and Scotland, Trump called the US and UK relationship, "'the highest level of special,'" which Bolton called "a new category."
Trump repeatedly instructed his staff to avoid criticizing Russia too much publicly (179).
In a "discussion" with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told the Turkish leader that Christians were "going crazy" about Turkey's incarceration of American pastor, Andrew Brunson, and Erdogan responded that Moslems in Turkey were "going crazy" and Trump interrupted him to say "they were going crazy all over the world."
Writes Bolton: "If possible, the conversation went downhill thereafter" (184-185).
Don't forget Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN. Not only were the Turks unable to understand what she was trying to negotiate, neither could the Trump team (186).
The "Haley Problem" included her belief that the US ambassador to the UN was the Secretary of State.
From everything Bolton heard "including directly from Trump, she and Tillerson [Rex Tillerson, secretary of state] cordially detested one another (well, maybe not cordially)." She wanted to visit India and visit the Dalai Lama: "The purpose of this trip was unclear, other than getting a photo op with the Dalai Lama, always good for an aspiring pol" (238).
When Bolton was at the Justice Department, "we called the Southern District [of New York] the 'Sovereign District of New York' because it so often resisted control by 'Main Justice,' let alone the White House" (185-186).
Discussion about the Korean War and its aftermath involved a continual re-education of the president as Bolton tried to enlighten him about that history.
Why "were we still there?" Trump complained. "Every few days, someone would inadvertently press a button somewhere, and Trump would be repeating his lines from the same movie soundtrack" (210).
It's easy to understand why Trump did everything he could to stop, to stall, to change the content of this book (491). Like so many tomes, it reveals him to be the Emperor of No Content.
* Although there are several references to Mnuchin and his trips to California, California is omitted from the otherwise good index, as are other words (vapors, Greenpeace, etc.).
Coming up: I rate the Trump books!
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