The president says he fired his national security adviser. Bolton says he resigned. Either way, their conflict was deep — and irreconcilable.
For months, the Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson had been lobbying President Donald Trump to fire John Bolton, telling him it was foolish to keep on his team a top adviser who did not share his views on pressing national security issues.
Carlson and a host of others, including several senior administration officials, frequently told Trump that Bolton, a career hawk with a reputation as a vicious bureaucratic infighter, not only wasn’t on his team but was using the news media against him.
Trump, who became a fan of his future national security adviser while watching his frequent television appearances on Fox, told these people that he enjoyed Bolton’s presence in negotiations because he believed he spooked U.S. adversaries like Iran. But he chafed at reading about and watching news reports of Bolton’s disagreements with administration policy on everything from talks with North Korea to pulling troops out of Syria to angling for a sitdown with Iranian leaders.
“Where there is public disagreement like that and it keeps going on from one issue to another, I do think there is a cumulative effect on the human psyche and it probably leads to less communication,” said Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff who talks frequently with the president and other senior administration officials.
Ultimately, it was hearing media accounts about how Bolton had advised the president to scuttle a meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David that proved a breaking point for Trump, according to sources in and out of the administration. In the president’s telling, he had taken his own counsel in arriving at the decision to call off the meeting and end the negotiations, and he was infuriated to hear Bolton credited with influencing his decision.
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Here's why President Trump and John Bolton parted ways https://t.co/7WMVNdOrCG
— POLITICO (@politico) September 11, 2019
Interesting thread: https://t.co/r24FPIJRQl
— David French (@DavidAFrench) September 10, 2019
A number of us have noted this since the beginning. If I were a foreign govt, you bet Fox would be a top target to penetrate. https://t.co/0ZsahIPDRY
— David Burbach (@dburbach) September 11, 2019
And there you have it. Pure totalitarian propaganda: a critic of Dear Leader must be an ideological enemy. pic.twitter.com/xfE6J7lEol
— Sarah Churchwell (@sarahchurchwell) September 11, 2019
John Bolton is a certifiable asshole hated by everyone in the foreign policy establishment for good reason. He has no interpersonal skills.
But to call Bolton "a man of the left" is just obscenely stupid.
Tucker has lost his mind.
— Eric Owens (@ericowensdc) September 11, 2019
Grandpa Ranty is going to spend his morning hoovering up adderal and ragetweeting. https://t.co/ZNolsJM5Mv
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 11, 2019
I believed from the start Bolton and Trump would not work out. Bolton would not approve of Trump cozying up to America’s enemies. Bolton might have been Trump’s best advisor on foreign policy if only Trump had listened to him. I still think someone — possibly one of the kids — whispered in Trump’s ear, convincing him that Bolton was the enemy.
So this country’s foreign policy, like just about everything else in this Administration, is complete chaos. Trump, the champion of America, is proving once again he does not have this nation’s best interests at heart.
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