President Trump blasted his former national security adviser Wednesday, saying if he had followed John Bolton’s advice, the US would be involved in “World War Six.”
“For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, ‘begged’ me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir,’ takes the job, mistakenly says ‘Libyan Model’ on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book,” Trump tweeted.
“All Classified National Security. Who would do this?”
Shortly after midnight, Trump questioned why Bolton didn’t “complain about this ‘nonsense’ a long time ago, when he was very publicly terminated. He said, not that it matters, NOTHING!”
According to Bolton’s upcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened,” Trump admitted to Bolton that he was pausing military aid to Ukraine until the country launched an investigation into Joe Biden — a revelation that has rocked the impeachment trial.
Democrats have called for Bolton to testify at the Senate trial because he has firsthand information about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Bolton has said he would be willing to appear if subpoenaed.
Some moderate Republicans, including Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, have signaled they would be receptive to hearing what Bolton has to say.
Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said during his defense of the president Tuesday in the Senate that “you cannot impeach a president on an unsourced allegation.”
“Responding to an unpublished manuscript that maybe some reporters have an idea of maybe what it says,” Sekulow told the senators. “That is what the evidence — if you want to call that evidence, I don’t know what you’d call that. I would call it inadmissible, but that’s what it is.”
Trump said he told Bolton his services were “no longer needed” in September because “I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions.”
But Bolton, who expressed aggressive views on how to deal with Iran and North Korea, said he offered to resign, but Trump told him they would discuss it later.
Details of Bolton’s book, which is expected to hit bookshelves in March, were leaked to the New York Times on Sunday after a copy of the manuscript was presented to the White House for vetting of potentially classified materials.
