US President Donald Trump is not fit for office and solely focused on getting reelected in the November election, former White House national security adviser John Bolton has said.
“I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job. There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than ‘What’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection,’ ” Bolton said in a clip of the interview, which will be broadcast on Sunday.
Bolton said Trump’s obsession with winning a second term in the White House clouded his decisions. In this regard, he cited the president’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea last year.
“Well, I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer term considerations fell by the wayside,” he said. “So, if he thought he could get a photo opportunity with Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone in Korea, there was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it and little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining positions of the United States.”
The hawkish politician has repeatedly denounced Trump’s “diplomatic outreach” to North Korea, calling it a failure.
Bolton said in February that “the pursuit of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, the meetings with him and the efforts to get a deal with North Korea are doomed to failure.”
The former national security adviser said “it was perfectly evident that North Korea policy was going to fail.”
Rounds of negotiations between the US and North Korea have ground to a halt as the US refused to offer any sanctions relief despite Pyongyang’s unilateral steps to show its goodwill in denuclearization efforts.
This comes as Bolton and Trump have locked horns over Bolton’s upcoming memoir, which is set to be released next week.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that is has filed a lawsuit to prevent publication of the book it said contains classified information.
The White House National Security Council “has determined that the manuscript in its present form contains certain passages – some up to several paragraphs in length – that contain classified national security information,” the lawsuit said.
Publication of the book “would cause irreparable harm, because the disclosure of instances of classified information in the manuscript reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage, to the national security of the United States,” according to the lawsuit.
Trump slammed Bolton on Friday night, describing him as a criminal and a liar.
“He broke the law,” Trump said of Bolton. “He was a washed-up guy. I gave him a chance. He couldn’t get Senate confirmed so I gave him a non-Senate confirmed position where I could just put him there, see how he worked.”
In a part of his book, obtained by the US media, Bolton levels a stunning accusation against Trump, claiming that the Republican president had asked his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to help him win re-election.
Trump fired Bolton last September after roughly 17 months as national security adviser.
Source: ABC News
