DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus The Room where it Happened-John Bolton Book

The new book by Bolton is set to drop next week-but many journalists already have their copy and the interviews have begun. Another disgruntled ex employee I guess. Here is the first part on China


John Bolton: The Scandal of Trump’s China Policy
The president pleaded with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for domestic political help, subordinated national-security issues to his own re-election prospects and ignored Beijing’s human-rights abuses

U.S. strategy toward the People’s Republic of China has rested for more than four decades on two basic propositions. The first is that the Chinese economy would be changed irreversibly by the rising prosperity caused by market-oriented policies, greater foreign investment, ever-deeper interconnections with global markets and broader acceptance of international economic norms. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was the apotheosis of this assessment.

The second proposition is that, as China’s national wealth increased, so too, inevitably, would its political openness. As China became more democratic, it would avoid competition for regional or global hegemony, and the risk of international conflict—hot or cold—would recede.

Both propositions were fundamentally incorrect. After joining the WTO, China did exactly the opposite of what was predicted. China gamed the organization, pursuing a mercantilist policy in a supposedly free-trade body. China stole intellectual property, forced technology transfers from foreign businesses and continued managing its economy in authoritarian ways.

Politically, China moved away from democracy, not toward it. In Xi Jinping, China now has its most powerful leader and its most centralized government since Mao Zedong. Ethnic and religious persecution on a massive scale continues. Meanwhile, China has created a formidable offensive cyberwarfare program, built a blue-water navy for the first time in 500 years, increased its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and more.


I saw these developments as a threat to U.S. strategic interests and to our friends and allies. The Obama administration basically sat back and watched it happen.

President Donald Trump in some respects embodies the growing U.S. concern about China. He appreciates the key truth that politico-military power rests on a strong economy. Trump frequently says that stopping China’s unfair economic growth at America’s expense is the best way to defeat China militarily, which is fundamentally correct.


But the real question is what Trump does about China’s threat. His advisers are badly fractured intellectually. The administration has “panda huggers” like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; confirmed free-traders like National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow; and China hawks like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, lead trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.

After I became Trump’s national security adviser in April 2018, I had the most futile role of all: I wanted to fit China trade policy into a broader strategic framework. We had a good slogan, calling for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region. But a bumper sticker is not a strategy, and we struggled to avoid being sucked into the black hole of U.S.-China trade issues.

Trade matters were handled from day one in a completely chaotic way.
Trade matters were handled from day one in a completely chaotic way. Trump’s favorite way to proceed was to get small armies of people together, either in the Oval Office or the Roosevelt Room, to argue out these complex, controversial issues. Over and over again, the same issues. Without resolution, or even worse, one outcome one day and a contrary outcome a few days later. The whole thing made my head hurt.

With the November 2018 midterm elections looming, there was little progress on the China trade front. Attention turned to the coming Buenos Aires G-20 summit the following month, when Xi and Trump could meet personally. Trump saw this as the meeting of his dreams, with the two big guys getting together, leaving the Europeans aside, cutting the big deal.

What could go wrong? Plenty, in Lighthizer’s view. He was very worried about how much Trump would give away once untethered.

In Buenos Aires on Dec. 1, at dinner, Xi began by telling Trump how wonderful he was, laying it on thick. Xi read steadily through note cards, doubtless all of it hashed out arduously in advance. Trump ad-libbed, with no one on the U.S. side knowing what he would say from one minute to the next.

One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him. Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.

Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump.
Xi finally shifted to substance, describing China’s positions: The U.S. would roll back Trump’s existing tariffs, and both parties would refrain from competitive currency manipulation and agree not to engage in cyber thievery (how thoughtful). The U.S. should eliminate Trump’s tariffs, Xi said, or at least agree to forgo new ones. “People expect this,” said Xi, and I feared at that moment that Trump would simply say yes to everything Xi had laid out.

Trump came close, unilaterally offering that U.S. tariffs would remain at 10% rather than rise to 25%, as he had previously threatened. In exchange, Trump asked merely for some increases in Chinese farm-product purchases, to help with the crucial farm-state vote. If that could be agreed, all the U.S. tariffs would be reduced. It was breathtaking.

Trump asked Lighthizer if he had left anything out, and Lighthizer did what he could to get the conversation back onto the plane of reality, focusing on the structural issues and ripping apart the Chinese proposal. Trump closed by saying Lighthizer would be in charge of the deal-making, and Jared Kushner would also be involved, at which point all the Chinese perked up and smiled.

The decisive play came in May 2019, when the Chinese reneged on several key elements of the emerging agreement, including all the structural issues. For me, this was proof that China simply wasn’t serious.

Trump spoke with Xi by phone on June 18, just over a week ahead of the year’s G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where they would next meet. Trump began by telling Xi he missed him and then said that the most popular thing he had ever been involved with was making a trade deal with China, which would be a big plus for him politically.


President Trump talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.
PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
In their meeting in Osaka on June 29, Xi told Trump that the U.S.-China relationship was the most important in the world. He said that some (unnamed) American political figures were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war with China.

Trump, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.
Whether Xi meant to finger the Democrats or some of us sitting on the U.S. side of the table, I don’t know, but Trump immediately assumed that Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility to China among the Democrats. Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.

Trump then raised the trade negotiations’ collapse the previous month, urging China to return to the positions it had retracted and conclude the most exciting, largest deal ever. He proposed that for the remaining $350 billion of trade imbalances (by Trump’s arithmetic), the U.S. would not impose tariffs, but he again returned to importuning Xi to buy as many American farm products as China could.

Xi agreed that we should restart the trade talks, welcoming Trump’s concession that there would be no new tariffs and agreeing that the two negotiating teams should resume discussions on farm products on a priority basis. “You’re the greatest Chinese leader in 300 years!” exulted Trump, amending that a few minutes later to “the greatest leader in Chinese history.”

Trump told Xi he was ‘the greatest leader in Chinese history.’
Subsequent negotiations after I resigned did lead to an interim “deal” announced in December 2019, but there was less to it than met the eye.

Trump’s conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump’s mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests. Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security. I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.

Take Trump’s handling of the threats posed by the Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE. Ross and others repeatedly pushed to strictly enforce U.S. regulations and criminal laws against fraudulent conduct, including both firms’ flouting of U.S. sanctions against Iran and other rogue states. The most important goal for Chinese “companies” like Huawei and ZTE is to infiltrate telecommunications and information-technology systems, notably 5G, and subject them to Chinese control (though both companies, of course, dispute the U.S. characterization of their activities).


The Huawei building in Shenzhen, China, Dec. 11, 2019.
PHOTO: ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Trump, by contrast, saw this not as a policy issue to be resolved but as an opportunity to make personal gestures to Xi. In 2018, for example, he reversed penalties that Ross and the Commerce Department had imposed on ZTE. In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in the trade deal—which, of course, was primarily about getting Trump re-elected in 2020.

These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency. Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.


A demonstrator confronts riot police during a protest against a proposed extradition law, Hong Kong, June 12, 2019.
PHOTO: EDUARDO LEAL/BLOOMBERG NEWS
As the trade talks went on, Hong Kong’s dissatisfaction over China’s bullying had been growing. An extradition bill provided the spark, and by early June 2019, massive protests were under way in Hong Kong.

I first heard Trump react on June 12, upon hearing that some 1.5 million people had been at Sunday’s demonstrations. “That’s a big deal,” he said. But he immediately added, “I don’t want to get involved,” and, “We have human-rights problems too.”

‘Who cares about it? I’m trying to make a deal.’— President Trump on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre
I hoped Trump would see these Hong Kong developments as giving him leverage over China. I should have known better. That same month, on the 30th anniversary of China’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Trump refused to issue a White House statement. “That was 15 years ago,” he said, inaccurately. “Who cares about it? I’m trying to make a deal. I don’t want anything.” And that was that.

Beijing’s repression of its Uighur citizens also proceeded apace. Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christmas dinner why we were considering sanctioning China over its treatment of the Uighurs, a largely Muslim people who live primarily in China’s northwest Xinjiang Province.

At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.


A facility believed to be a ‘re-education camp’ in which Uighur Muslims are detained, Artux, Xinjiang region, China, June 2, 2019.
PHOTO: GREG BAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Trump was particularly dyspeptic about Taiwan, having listened to Wall Street financiers who had gotten rich off mainland China investments. One of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the historic Resolute desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.” So much for American commitments and obligations to another democratic ally.

More thunder out of China came in 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic. China withheld, fabricated and distorted information about the disease; suppressed dissent from physicians and others; hindered efforts by the World Health Organization and others to get accurate information; and engaged in active disinformation campaigns, trying to argue that the new coronavirus did not originate in China.

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There was plenty to criticize in Trump’s response, starting with the administration’s early, relentless assertion that the disease was “contained” and would have little or no economic effect. Trump’s reflex to try to talk his way out of anything, even a public-health crisis, only undercut his and the nation’s credibility, with his statements looking more like political damage control than responsible public-health advice.

Other criticisms of the administration, however, were frivolous. One such complaint targeted part of the general streamlining of NSC staffing I conducted in my first months at the White House. To reduce duplication and overlap and enhance coordination and efficiency, it made good management sense to shift the responsibilities of the NSC directorate dealing with global health and biodefense into the directorate dealing with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Bioweapon attacks and pandemics can have much in common, and the medical and public-health expertise required to deal with both threats goes hand in hand. Most of the personnel working in the prior global health directorate simply moved to the combined directorate and continued doing exactly what they were doing before.

It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty.
At most, the internal NSC structure was the quiver of a butterfly’s wings in the tsunami of Trump’s chaos. Despite the indifference at the top of the White House, the cognizant NSC staffers did their duty in the pandemic, raising options like shutdowns and social distancing far before Trump did so in March. The NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty.

In today’s pre-2020 election climate, Trump has made a sharp turn to anti-China rhetoric. Frustrated in his search for the big China trade deal, and mortally afraid of the negative political effects of the coronavirus pandemic on his re-election prospects, Trump has now decided to blame China, with ample justification. Whether his actions will match his words remains to be seen. His administration has signaled that Beijing’s suppression of dissent in Hong Kong will have consequences, but no actual consequences have yet been imposed.

Most important of all, will Trump’s current China pose last beyond election day? The Trump presidency is not grounded in philosophy, grand strategy or policy. It is grounded in Trump. That is something to think about for those, especially China realists, who believe they know what he will do in a second term.

—Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which Simon & Schuster will publish on June 23.

Bolton Says House Should Have Investigated Trump for Impeachable Actions Beyond Ukraine
Peter Baker 3 hrs ago

John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, says in his new book that the House in its impeachment inquiry should have investigated President Trump not just for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic foes but for a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons.

John R. Bolton et al. standing next to a person in a suit and tie: John R. Bolton was President Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months. Mr. Trump asked if Finland was part of Russia, Mr. Bolton wrote in his new book.© Doug Mills/The New York Times John R. Bolton was President Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months. Mr. Trump asked if Finland was part of Russia, Mr. Bolton wrote in his new book.
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.


The book, “The Room Where It Happened,” was obtained by The New York Times in advance of its scheduled publication next Tuesday and has already become a political lightning rod in the thick of an election campaign and a No. 1 best seller on Amazon.com even before it hits the bookstores. The Justice Department filed a last-minute lawsuit against Mr. Bolton this week seeking to stop publication even as Mr. Trump’s critics complained that Mr. Bolton should have come forward during impeachment proceedings rather than save his account for a $2 million book contract.

While other books by journalists, lower-level former aides and even an anonymous senior official have revealed much about the Trump White House, Mr. Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official who participated in major foreign policy events and has a lifetime of conservative credentials. It is a withering portrait of a president ignorant of even basic facts about the world, susceptible to transparent flattery by authoritarian leaders manipulating him and prone to false statements, foul-mouthed eruptions and snap decisions that aides try to manage or reverse.

a man in a suit standing in front of a door: While other books by journalists, lower-level former aides and even an anonymous senior official have revealed much about the Trump White House, Mr. Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official.© Doug Mills/The New York Times While other books by journalists, lower-level former aides and even an anonymous senior official have revealed much about the Trump White House, Mr. Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official.
Mr. Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia, Mr. Bolton writes. He came closer to withdrawing the United States from NATO than previously known. Even top advisers who position themselves as unswervingly loyal mock him behind his back. During Mr. Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s leader, according to the book, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Mr. Bolton a note disparaging the president, saying, “He is so full of s**t.”

A month later, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Pompeo dismissed the president’s North Korea diplomacy, declaring that there was “zero probability of success.”

Intelligence briefings with the president were a waste of time “since much of the time was spent listening to Trump, rather than Trump listening to the briefers.” Mr. Trump likes pitting staff members against one another, at one point telling Mr. Bolton that former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had once referred to Nikki R. Haley, then the ambassador to the United Nations, by a sexist obscenity — an assertion Mr. Bolton seemed to doubt but found telling that the president would make it.

Mr. Trump said so many things that were wrong or false that Mr. Bolton in the book regularly includes phrases like “(the opposite of the truth)” following some quote from the president. And Mr. Trump in this telling has no overarching philosophy of governance or foreign policy but rather a series of gut-driven instincts that sometimes mirrored Mr. Bolton’s but other times were, in his view, dangerous and reckless.

“His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy,” Mr. Bolton writes. “That had its pros and cons.”

Mr. Bolton is a complicated, controversial figure. A former official under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush who rose to United Nations ambassador, he has been one of the most vocal advocates for a hard-line foreign policy, a supporter of the Iraq war who has favored possible military action against rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

Like Mr. Tillerson and other officials who went to work for Mr. Trump believing they could manage him, Mr. Bolton agreed to become the president’s third national security adviser in 2018 thinking he understood the risks and limits. But unlike some of the so-called “axis of adults,” as he calls Mr. Tillerson and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who tried to minimize what they saw as the damage of the president’s tenure, Mr. Bolton sought to use his 17 months in the White House to accomplish policy goals that were important to him, like withdrawing the United States from a host of international agreements he considers flawed, like the Iran nuclear accord, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and others.

Mr. Bolton thought Mr. Trump’s diplomatic flirtation with the likes of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia were ill-advised and even “foolish” and spent much of his tenure trying to stop the president from making what he deemed bad deals. He eventually resigned last September — Mr. Trump claimed he fired him — after they clashed over Iran, North Korea, Ukraine and a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bolton did not agree to testify during the House impeachment inquiry last fall, saying he would wait to see if a judge would rule that former aides like him should do so over White House objections. But after the House impeached Mr. Trump for abuse of power for withholding security aid while pressuring Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Bolton offered to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed.

Senate Republicans blocked calling Mr. Bolton as a witness even after The Times reported in January that his then-unpublished book confirmed that Mr. Trump linked the suspended security aid to his insistence that Ukraine investigate his political rivals. The Senate went on to acquit Mr. Trump almost entirely along party lines. But Mr. Bolton engendered great anger among critics of the president for not making his account public before now.

The book confirms House testimony that Mr. Bolton was wary all along of the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine and provides firsthand evidence of his own that Mr. Trump explicitly linked the security aid to investigations involving Mr. Biden and Hillary Clinton. On Aug. 20, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Trump “said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.” Mr. Bolton writes that he, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper tried eight to 10 times to get Mr. Trump to release the aid.

Mr. Bolton, however, had nothing for scorn for the House Democrats who impeached Mr. Trump, saying they committed “impeachment malpractice” by limiting their inquiry to the Ukraine matter and moving too quickly for their own political reasons. Instead, he said they should have also looked at how Mr. Trump was willing to intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor Mr. Xi.

Mr. Trump married politics with policy during a meeting with Mr. Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka, Japan, last summer, according to the book. Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that unnamed political figures in the United States were trying to spark a new cold war with China.

“Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” Mr. Bolton says he would have printed Mr. Trump’s exact words, “but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Mr. Bolton does not say these are necessarily impeachable offenses and adds that he does not know everything that happened with regard to all of these episodes, but he reported them to Mr. Barr and Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. They should have been investigated by the House, he said, and at the very least suggested abuses of a president’s duty to put the nation’s interests ahead of his own.

“A president may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guise of national interest,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests,” he adds, then “there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had been perpetrated.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...ine/ar-BB15CHwZ

- On Ukraine, Bolton also cites personal conversations with Trump confirming a "quid pro quo" that Trump had long denied, including an August meeting in which Trump allegedly made the bargain explicit."He said he wasn't in favor of sending them anything until all Russia-investigation material related to [Hillary] Clinton and Biden had been turned over," Bolton writes.

Sign a waver/get a ticket.

Don't sue me if you get infected by The Hoax ("15 cases in America- and dropping...").


I really don't get the kind of mind that can't connect these painfully obvious dots. These folks probably flunked the dots page of 'Highlights!' magazine while they were waiting for their kids to get out of the dentist's chair.

I'm convinced that he really doesn't get this whole pandemic thing, and the fact that this scourge is several times more virulent/deadly than yearly Influenza.

Doesn't he realize that these gatherings actually endanger the very ppl he needs, come November?

*I wonder about the same thing as I see these mass demonstrations in cities and towns all over the globe, as well.

Nothing here that I could not have anticipated...

I agree with Bolton that the dems moved too fast for their own political gain. But in the end would it have mattered? It isn't like you could be severely impeached or anything, and repubs would still not have gone against their orange messiah. We'd have been in the same boat as we are not with more bickering and spent money.

Half of me almost wishes he gets elected again in November so he can be impeached again - then he'd finally have something to brag about - the best at being impeached...

‘Completely Crazy’: Lighthizer Denies Bolton’s Claim That Trump Asked China For Election Help



Chuck Ross
Investigative Reporter
June 17, 2020


U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer denied Wednesday that President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping in June 2019 for help in the upcoming presidential election, an allegation that former national security adviser John Bolton levels in his forthcoming memoir.

“Absolutely untrue, never happened. I was there, I have no recollection of that ever happening. I don’t believe it’s true, I don’t believe it ever happened,” Lighthizer testified during a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had asked Lighthizer, a well-known critic of the Chinese government, about an excerpt from Bolton’s book in which he alleged that Trump asked Xi for election help during a meeting in Japan on the sidelines of the Group 20 summit in June 2019.

“Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton wrote in an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal.

Robert Lighthizer, U.S. trade representative, speaks during a signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Aug. 2, 2019. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via Bloomberg)

“He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.” (RELATED: ‘He Is So Full Of Sh*t’: Bolton Claims Mike Pompeo, Others Mocked Trump Behind His Back)

Lighthizer told Menendez that he was in the meeting in question and that Bolton’s allegation was “completely crazy.”

“Would I have recollected something as crazy as that? Of course I would,” Lighthizer said.

Bolton makes numerous other bombshell allegations against Trump in his book, “The Room Where It Happened.” He accuses his former boss of appeasing foreign dictators such as Xi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bolton also claimed that top Trump administration officials, including Sec. of State Mike Pompeo, were highly critical of the president during private conversations.

The Trump Justice Department sued Bolton on Tuesday to delay the release of the memoir, which is set for release on June 23

https://dailycaller.com/2020/06/17/light...3LXyivrQLhWq0j8

The Daily Caller, Lol!

Tucker Carlson's rag.

The Daily Caller is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by now Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel in 2010. Launched as a "conservative answer to The Huffington Post", The Daily Caller quadrupled its audience and became profitable by 2012, surpassing several rival websites by 2013. The Daily Caller is a member of the White House press pool.[2]

The Daily Caller has frequently published false stories. The website publishes articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. The website has published articles by white supremacists, such as Jason Kessler and Peter Brimelow. Scott Greer was deputy editor at the Daily Caller; after his departure, it was revealed that he published articles espousing white nationalist, racist anti-black and antisemitic views under a pseudonym in white supremacist publications.

Try this Milk Man, Lighthizer said it didn't happen!

Lighthizer denies Bolton claim that Trump asked Xi for election help

https://thehill.com/policy/international...r-election-help



Lighthizer denies Bolton claim that Trump asked China’s Xi for 2020 help: ‘Never happened. I was there’

https://fox40jackson.com/uncategorized/l...ed-i-was-there/



Lighthizer denies Bolton claim that Trump asked Chinese President Xi for reelection help

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/...reelection-help

And Bill Clinton said he didn’t have sexual relations with Monica. We know how that turned out.

In 2010 Fox Interview, John Bolton Confessed He Would ‘Absolutely’ Lie About National Security Matters


In a 2010 interview with Andrew Napolitano on Fox Business Channel, former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton stated that he would have no problem lying to the public if he thought it was necessary to protect national security.

Bolton, who has written a book for Simon & Shuster based on his time working on national security policy for President Donald Trump that is scheduled to be released in March of 2020, also said during the 2010 interview that government secrecy and protection of classified material was necessary to protect the public.

Bolton become a central character in Senate impeachment proceedings against Trump after information about his forthcoming book was leaked to the New York Times just days after Bolton’s lawyer was informed by the National Security Council that his book contained top secret classified information. That book coincidentally was made available for pre-sale on Amazon the same day the New York Times wrote about its leaked contents.

“A diplomat is a statesman sent out to lie for his country,” the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said before touting his own ability to “spin” information without technically lying.

Bolton was specifically invited on to discuss sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables and documents that had been obtained and released at the time by Wikileaks, an act which Bolton characterized as “an attack on the United States.”

“Is it an attack on the United States for us to know that our ally, Saudi Arabia, is actually financing Al Qaeda?” Napolitano asked. “Isn’t that something we would want to know?”

“I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs and possibly for deception where it’s appropriate,” Bolton responded. He then approvingly quoted Winston Churchill’s assertion that “truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.”

“Do you really believe that?” Napolitano responded. “You would lie in order to preserve the truth?”

“Absolutely,” Bolton said. “If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it.”

“Why do people in the government think that the rules of civil society or the laws don’t apply to them?” Napolitano countered.

“Because they are not dealing in the civil society we live in under the Constitution,” Bolton said. “They are dealing in an anarchic environment internationally where different rules apply.”

“But you took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the Constitution mandates certain openness and certain fairness,” Napolitano countered. “You’re willing to do away with that in order to achieve a temporary military goal?”

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact,” Bolton responded, quoting former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.

In his forthcoming book, Bolton allegedly makes several claims about private conversations with Trump and the president’s top national security officials regarding Rudy Giuliani, according to the New York Times. Attorney General William Barr and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, both of whom were reportedly singled out by Bolton as parties to these conversations, deny Bolton’s alleged claims.

“John Bolton never informed Mick Mulvaney of any concerns surrounding Bolton’s purported August conversation with the President,” an attorney for Mulvaney said. “Nor did Mr. Mulvaney ever have a conversation with the President or anyone else indicating that Ukrainian military aid was withheld in exchange for a Ukrainian investigation of Burisma, the Bidens, or the 2016 election.”

“There was no discussion of ‘personal favors’ or ‘undue influence’ on investigations, nor did Attorney General Barr state that the President’s conversations with foreign leaders was improper,” Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. “If this is truly what Mr. Bolton has written, then it seems he is attributing to Attorney General Barr his own current views–views with which Attorney General Barr does not agree.”

Trump and Bolton, who was fired by the president last September, famously clashed on foreign policy and national security matters, as Bolton has a reputation for recommending military intervention across the globe.

“[F]rankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.




https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/29/in-...curity-matters/

Nice fake news there fishy.

Actually I could care less what Bolton has to say. I’ve moved so pass this anyways.

Voting is 100% more effective than complaining here on the internet.

Moving on.

Sorry - that's a really pathetic effort to discredit the messenger. Bolton said he would lie about National Security, the inference being to PROTECT the nations security. Not to sell books.

As for the Trump sycophant who is making statements about something never happening ... yeah, what ever. If you really believe that stuff your more lost than we all realized.

Trump is a piece of garbage with no morals and who acts like he is still running his own personal business with no oversight and no accountability. He only has his personal interests at heart, period. (Maybe that's why he's running the debt up - he's trying to Bankrupt us like so many of his businesses.)

Here is the problem.. Bolton has been known as a NOTE TAKER.. I mean a serious note taker.

I'm betting he has notes from all his meetings with Trump to back up every statement/assertion he makes.

What else makes sense to me is that Bolton seems to attack Democrats as well as Trump and Republicans in this book..

Obviously without reading the book, you can't get a sense of how tilted it is one way or another, Excerpts can't give a real picture.

But to me it's pretty clear, Trump is a moron and Bolton is proving it,

The sad reality is nothing that Bolton brought to light shocked or surprised me. This is just who Trump is and who he's always been. Who would have ever imagined we would have a president do the kind of things Trump has done for three and a half years and so many people still support him, make excuses for him and claim everyone who speaks out against him is a liar? Especially when he's proven himself to be a perpetual liar.

Murica!

Bolton had his chance to be a Patriotic American. He didn't take it. His honesty is refreshing but he's a day late and a dollar short.

This is why he's wrong that had Democrats not had their heads in their butt and actually done an investigation vs run a circus, Trump impeachment vote would've gone differently. You had Senators and Reps state that they thought he was guilty of what he was being accused, and what he was accused of was an offense worthy of being removed from office, but voted not guilty because they didn't want to remove him from office (paraphrasing).

I don't believe anything would have changed the votes of the GOP senators. I guess we'll never know but I haven't seen a single one of them say it would have. A conviction to remove him takes a two thirds vote. I just don't believe that would have happened.

Just so I'm clear (I don't think I was now that I re-read my previous post), I think the investigation was a joke, but despite that they rendered enough evidence to exceed the burden of proof. Several members of the GOP even admitted as much.

But still didn't vote guilty.

How was the investigation a joke if it led to so much real evidence that even the gop had to admit there was wrong doing?

That’s like claiming your marriage is a joke even though the results say you were the happiest you ever been while married.

There was so much damning evidence left to find that even those dummies found some. There was so much more to be found/investigated, but it probably wouldn't have mattered.

Which party held a trial that didn't want testimony from witnesses?

They're the real jokers here who spat in the face of the constitution.

If y'all want to re-hash which side has the bigger group of clowns, be my guest. Both are so far past redemption, though, that I don't really see that conversation as a value-add.

Obstructing Justice became a running theme. Not only that, the Dems stated plainly they wished to focus on a single issue because they knew expanding it would open the door for confusion and to muddy the waters and derail the focus. I don't know if that was the right tactic or not but it was plainly let be known that was the road they planned to travel.

As for the lie parade, Trump condemned china's concentration camps a year before Boltons claim.

Trump: Everything in that book is a lie. Fake stories.
Also Trump: Can't publish the book, everything in there is classified.

Wonder why so many fake stories are classified

Trump said it would be 'cool' to invade Venezuela because the country is 'really part of the United States,' according to John Bolton's new book

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-said-cool-invade-venezuela-192629322.html

And here’s my favorite part:

The US president also told Chinese President Xi Jinping that Americans wanted him to amend the Constitution to allow him to serve more than two terms, Bolton writes.

____________

Lolololololololol. Actually, that would be fine, because if the constitution was amended NOW, we can watch Obama mop the floor with trump on his way to a third term!

Here's the real kicker. The known habitual liar, Trump, is calling someone who is not known as a liar, a liar. Yet so many take the word of a known liar over someone who is not a known liar.

It's hilarious.

I don’t find it hilarious anymore. Pathetic is more appropriate.

This is where I'm at. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so appalling and tragic.

j/c...

Oh boy. "Resigning"

What is happening.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/nyreg...pgtype=Homepage

From this article,

Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team have been at the forefront of corruption inquiries in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison, and have been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

And
Mr. Berman’s office has taken an aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump administration, from the prosecution and guilty plea obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation, growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump’s private company and others close to him.

Over the last year, Mr. Berman’s office brought indictments against two close associates of the president’s current lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and began an investigation into Mr. Giuliani himself, focusing on whether his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on the president’s political rivals violated laws on lobbying for foreign entities.

Mr. Berman’s office also conducted an investigation into Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, subpoenaing financial and other records as part of a broad inquiry into possible illegal contributions from foreigners.

And there is more:

Mr. Barr’s move to dismiss Mr. Berman came just days after Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, alleged in a new book that Mr. Trump sought to interfere in an investigation by Mr. Berman’s office into a Turkish bank, in a bid to cut deals with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan is perhaps the most famous federal prosecutor’s post in the country. The office, through Democratic and Republican administrations, has long prized a tradition of independence from the Justice Department and Washington. It has even been nicknamed the “Sovereign District of New York.”

Mr. Berman worked there in the 1990s as a prosecutor, but he took over the office under unusual circumstances.

A Republican who contributed to the president’s campaign and worked at the same law firm as Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Berman was never formally nominated for the position by Mr. Trump or confirmed by the Senate, as is normal protocol for United States attorneys.

In 2018, the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, appointed Mr. Berman as interim United States attorney in Manhattan.

But Mr. Trump never formally sent Mr. Berman’s nomination to the Senate. After 120 days, his formal appointment to the post was made by the judges of the United States District Court.

Mr. Berman took note of the nature of his appointment to the position in explaining why he was refusing to step down.