Bolton was hired to act as an advisor but has shown himself a petulant child. The diplomatic damage he has done might eventually be measured in lives.
Bolton is portraying himself as making a principled stand, warning the world about a President he sees as ‘unfit for office’. Bolton’s critics see things quite differently:
It turns out that Bolton is a self-aggrandizing, narcissistic fraud who turned on his country for a big payday. Not surprisingly, the Democrat Party-press promote him as it promoted Stormy Daniels, Avenatti, Cohen, Russia Collusion, and all the rest.https://t.co/tkLgmkxGCp
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) June 22, 2020
Trump, obviously is one of them:
I gave John Bolton, who was incapable of being Senate confirmed because he was considered a wacko, and was not liked, a chance. I always like hearing differing points of view. He turned out to be grossly incompetent, and a liar. See judge’s opinion. CLASSIFIED INFORMATION!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020
Yes, even the judge who let the book go forward had some harsh words for him.
“Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability,” Judge Royce Lamberth said in a ruling. “But these facts do not control the motion before the Court. The government has failed to establish that an injunction will prevent irreparable harm.” —FoxNews
Now other world leaders are weighing in on Bolton’s ‘tell-all’. South Korea, for one, was NOT impressed by the fact that Bolton exploited his unique access to diplomatic conversations to pad his own bank account and settle scores.
Worse still, South Korea is straight-up calling him a liar.
The book includes details of the ill-fated summit in Hanoi, Vietnam—the third meeting between the two leaders which fell apart with the two sides unable to reach a deal on sanctions relief and denuclearization.
The embarrassing collapse of the summit marked the start of a new cycle of deteriorating relations between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington, D.C.
In the book, Bolton alleges that South Korean President Moon Jae-in had pushed an unrealistic “unification” agenda during talks between the three nations, only to be disappointed by the eventual lack of progress.
South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong dismissed the assertion in a statement, Reuters reported. “It does not reflect accurate facts and substantially distorts facts,” Chung said of Bolton’s book.
Chung did not detail which parts of the book were inaccurate, but said its publication had set a “dangerous precedent.” He added, “Unilaterally publishing consultations made based on mutual trust violates the basic principles of diplomacy and could severely damage future negotiations. —NewsWeek
It shouldn’t surprise us that he was caught in a lie.
Another of his more salacious claims (one that was cited in the promotion of the book) is pretty easily refuted. It was the claim that Xi and Trump talked about the Uyghur concentration camps, with Trump speaking approvingly of them.
Seeing as Xi has never publicly admitted to any such concentration camps, and the conversation Bolton described did not happen in his presence but was actually hearsay he claims was told him by an interpreter, his story should be taken with about a block of salt.
Another example of Bolton’s story being leakier than a sieve is the claim that Putin pressured Trump into supporting Maduro. Maduro’s inner circle have been targeted with sanctions, and his rival was invited to Trump’s SOTU speech and introduced as Venezuela’s rightful Head of State.
Only time will tell whether that 30 pieces of silver the book deal netted him proved to be worth it in the long run.
