Ambassador John Bolton vs. Secretary Mike Pompeo:
“My dispute with Pompeo centered on what I thought was his prioritizing his political ambition over what I thought his principles were. He saw during the Trump Administration that his ticket to higher office was to be Trump’s obedient bag carrier.”
In an interview with New Hampshire Today’s Chris Ryan, former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor, John Bolton vigorously responds to accusations by former Trump Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo; discusses the foreign policy missteps in Afghanistan by Trump and Pompeo; and analyzes the impact of the US and Germany providing tanks to Ukraine.
In his book, Don’t Give an Inch, and in an interview yesterday on New Hampshire Today, Mike Pompeo criticized Ambassador Bolton’s performance as National Security Advisor and that spilling classified information in his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, was a criminal act and the definition of treason.
Ambassador Bolton fired back at Secretary Pompeo by discussing the long and arduous prepublication review process which is required for persons like Bolton and Pompeo who have had access to highly classified materials to write about their activities. Bolton also talked about efforts by the Trump Administration to suppress publication.
“Those comments say more about Pompeo’s character than they do about my book. . . I’d stand my book up against anybody’s as having gone through all of the proper legal procedures.”
When John Bolton was asked to describe his differences with Pompeo while they were part of the Trump Administrations, he took several shots at the former Secretary of State.
“My dispute with Pompeo centered on what I thought was his prioritizing his political ambition over what I thought his principles were. He saw during the Trump Administration that his ticket to higher office was to be Trump’s obedient bag carrier.”
Ambassador Bolton alleges that Pompeo would withhold information about North Korea and Afghanistan from the President in order to avoid disagreements with Trump.
For instance, John Bolton claims that President Trump and Mike Pompeo were so motivated to end our twenty-year war in Afghanistan that they circumvented the Afghan government and negotiated directly with the Taliban.
As a result, Bolton explained that the Afghan people lost confidence in their government which we had worked so hard to establish, realized that the US would be pulling out soon, and accepted that the Taliban take over was inevitable.
“This is a mistake that shows that Pompeo is not fit to be president.”
In the last segment, Ambassador Bolton assesses recent developments in Ukraine. Although he supports the recent commitment to send US and German tanks to assist the Ukrainian forces, the former National Security Advisor is concerned that there doesn’t seem to be a cohesive strategy.
Ambassador Bolton believes that Russia’s poor performance on the battlefield will force Putin to try to cause splits in the NATO alliance.