John Bolton: Not accurate to say ‘Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians’
Former national security adviser John Bolton pushed back against the idea that former President Trump’s behavior discouraged Russian military aggression while he was in office, saying, “It’s just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians.”
During an interview with Bolton, Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said that “there is something to be said, though, about the simple fact that there was not aggression during the four years” Trump was in office, noting a list of actions that the Washington think tank Brookings Institution said the Trump administration took against Russia.
“I mean, he took a very tough stance against Russia. I’m surprised you don’t think that he would have handled it better than Joe Biden,” Schmitt told Bolton.
“He did not,” Bolton replied. “We didn’t sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have. We should have brought the project to an end. We did impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and several others because of their sales of S-400 anti-aircraft systems to other countries. But in almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard.”
The Trump-era national security adviser claimed the former president did not know where Ukraine was on a map and said he believed Russia did not take more aggressive actions while Trump was in office because Russia “didn’t feel that their military was ready.”
“The fact is that he barely knew where Ukraine was. He once asked John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were a part of Russia. It’s just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians,” Bolton said.
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John Bolton: Not accurate to say "Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" https://t.co/58HlbiIUd4 pic.twitter.com/FasccXriiJ
— The Hill (@thehill) March 1, 2022
John Bolton pushes back on Newsmax host: "[Trump] barely knew where Ukraine was…It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" pic.twitter.com/ICRmmeJ8C3
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 1, 2022
We've had presidents with physical and emotional problems, like all normal human beings. But Trump was a president whose mental illness really challenged the system itself, because it simply wasn't designed to deal with such levels of overt craziness. https://t.co/zYYpRTLD9L
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 28, 2022
Had Putin tried to conquer Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, there would have been no action by the US to stop it. Plus NATO would not have acted. Under Trump, the rest of NATO was the enemy. European countries knew America with Trump at the helm could not be trusted. President Biden has restored that trust.
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