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    ‘Fascist’, ‘conman’, ‘predator’, ‘cheat’: what 11 former Trump staffers say about him now

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    They range from top generals to reality stars to lawyers, but one thing all these people have in common: they have worked closely with Donald Trump and have gone public with their warnings on what they really think of him.John KellyChief of staff, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US Marine Corps general, Kelly served first as Trump’s secretary of homeland security in 2017, then was appointed White House chief of staff, a role he held from July 2017 to January 2019. Kelly’s departure from the White House followed reports of the general’s declining relationship with Trump and alleged frequent disagreements. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told an associate to “stop calling John for anything”. According to the veteran journalist Bob Woodward in his 2018 book Fear, Kelly called Trump an “idiot” and the head of a “Crazytown” administration.What he says now: Kelly recently said his former boss fitted “into the general definition of fascist” who “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government”.Mark MilleyChair of joint chiefs of staff, 2019-23View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US army general, Milley served as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump and Joe Biden. Under Trump, Milley became the national focus in June 2020 when he participated in Trump’s photo op at St John’s church in Washington DC wearing military fatigues, amid ongoing demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd. He publicly apologized for the appearance, saying: “I should not have been there.” Reports later emerged that Milley “yelled” at Trump and refused to be in charge of the federal response to the racial justice protests.What he says about Trump now: Milley has called Trump a “fascist to the core” and was doing “great and irreparable harm”.Mark EsperSecretary of defense, 2019-20View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: The politician and marketing executive served as defense secretary under Trump from July 2019 until November 2020, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his tenure Esper repeatedly clashed with Trump, refusing to send “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs” and to to deploy troops across the country amid the 2020 racial justice protests. Esper publicly opposed Trump’s threat to levy the military against protesters using the 1807 Insurrection Act, telling journalists: “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used … in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations.”What he says about Trump now: Esper said Trump “has those inclinations” towards fascism: “I think it’s something we should be wary about.”James MattisSecretary of defense, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: As Trump’s first defense secretary, Mattis clashed with Trump over the US’s treatment of allies and its approach to “malign actors and strategic competitors” across the world. He resigned in December 2018 a day after Trump announced the abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Syria. In 2020, Mattis publicly condemned Trump’s handling of the racial justice protests, saying: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”What he says about Trump now: Mattis said Trump makes a “mockery of our constitution”.John BoltonNational security adviser, 2018-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Bolton served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Trump reportedly began excluding him from meetings about the Afghanistan war, and eventually ousted him completely after Bolton attempted to stop Trump from inviting the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks (an idea Trump eventually scrapped).What he says about Trump now: Bolton has said Trump is “unfit to be president” and “hasn’t got the brains” for a dictatorship.Rex TillersonSecretary of state, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, Tillerson served as secretary of state under Trump from February 2017 to March 2018, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his time as secretary of state, reports emerged that Tillerson once called Trump a “moron”, leading Trump to challenge him to an IQ test. The two men also publicly disagreed on US foreign policy surrounding North Korea, with Tillerson saying: “We do talk to them.” In response, Trump tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.What he says about Trump now: Tillerson has called Trump “pretty undisciplined – doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports” and added: “His understanding of global events [and] his understanding of US history was really limited.”Omarosa Manigault NewmanWhite House aide, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former participant on The Apprentice, the TV show Trump hosted, Newman was hired as top aide for Trump in January 2017 until she was fired a year later by John Kelly. She later released secretly recorded White House conversations, including one in which Trump expressed his surprise at her being fired.What she says about Trump now: “I fell for a conman – a conman who turned out to be the biggest fraud.”Mike PenceVice-president, 2017-2021View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Pence served as Trump’s vice-president and was his closest confidant for years. Following the January 6 Capitol Hill riots in 2021, a crowd of Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” after Trump egged them on because he was angry Pence had refused to overturn the election results in Trump’s favor by refusing to certify the vote (a power the vice-president does not even have).What he says about Trump now: “Anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president again.”Michael CohenTrump’s former lawyer and fixerView image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Once Trump’s attorney and fixer, Cohen had such a tight relationship with the billionaire real estate mogul that he once described himself as Trump’s “attack dog with a law license”. Cohen later became the star witness in Trump’s criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, in which Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.What he says about Trump now: “A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator and a conman.”Cassidy HutchinsonAide to Trump’s chief of staff, 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Hutchinson became the focus of national attention in 2022 when she testified to the January 6 House investigative committee that Trump knowingly directed armed supporters to storm the Capitol.What she says about Trump now: “As an American, I was disgusted” she said of Trump’s role in the mob’s attempt to overturn the election. “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”Alyssa Farah GriffinWhite House communications director, April-December 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: Griffin, the former communications director for Trump, joined the White House in April 2020 and served until her resignation in December of that year. Describing her resignation to Politico in 2021, Griffin said: “I made the decision to step down in December because I saw where this was heading, and I wasn’t comfortable being a part of sharing this message to the public that the election results might go a different way.”What she says about Trump now: She has called his messaging to women “creepy” and “infantilizing”, and predicted Trump is “going to try to steal the election” again. More

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      John Bolton says he will write in Dick Cheney instead of voting for Biden

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump who wrote a tell-all book and now campaigns against him, will cast a write-in vote for the former vice-president Dick Cheney instead of Joe Biden this year – despite saying Trump must not be re-elected.Bemoaning Trump’s focus on the 2020 election, which he lost conclusively but falsely insists was won with electoral fraud, Bolton told CNN that four years ago: “I voted for Dick Cheney.“And I’ll vote for Dick Cheney again this November. He was a principled Reaganite conservative and he still is. Age is no longer a factor in American presidential politics, so his age doesn’t disqualify him.”Cheney, 83, has suffered five heart attacks, the first aged just 37. In 2001, at the beginning of his vice-presidency to George W Bush, he prepared a resignation letter lest he become too ill to do the job. He went on to be by most judgments the most powerful vice-president of all but also an architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and sparked chaos across the Middle East.Three years after leaving office, in 2012 and aged 71, Cheney was given a new heart.Bolton said: “I think he’d do an immensely better job than either Trump or Biden.”Biden is 81. Trump is 77. Both are subject to doubts about their mental and physical capacity to be president.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties. Biden does not.Trump was impeached twice, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and for inciting an insurrection in the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. Attempts to impeach Biden, over alleged corruption involving his son, have failed to produce evidence or momentum.On CNN, Bolton was asked if he had considered writing in Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who lost her seat in Congress over her opposition to Trump and who has flirted with a presidential run.Bolton said: “Well, I like Liz a lot. And, you know, maybe someday she’ll get my write-in vote too. But right now I’ll stick with her father.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope it sways the electorate and prevents both Trump and Biden from being the successful candidate and if I could start a nationwide write-in campaign for Dick Cheney, maybe I should do that.”Trump v Biden round two promises to be settled by razor-thin margins in a small number of battleground states. Both candidates fear the impact of third-party candidates or voters deserting the major party picks in any way.Among other anti-Trump conservatives, Bolton’s choice did not land well.“I think this is so wrong,” said Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman who ran for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2020.“Bolton believes Trump is unfit, yet he won’t vote for Joe Biden, the only person on the ballot this year who can keep Trump out of the White House. Instead he does this. This is wrong.” More

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      Ex-Trump adviser says former president ‘hasn’t got the brains’ for dictatorship

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      A former national security adviser in the Donald Trump White House has said that the ex-president “hasn’t got the brains” to helm a dictatorship, despite his admiration for such rulers.In an interview with the conservative French outlet Le Figaro, John Bolton, 75, was asked whether Trump had tendencies that mirror dictators like the ones he has previously praised. Bolton not only disparaged Trump’s intellectual capacity, he also disparaged the former president’s professional background, exclaiming: “He’s a property developer, for God’s sake!”Now a vocal critic of Trump, Bolton served as the former president’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton had previously served as US ambassador to the UN during George W Bush’s presidency, developing a reputation as a foreign policy hawk.Bolton’s remarks to Le Figaro suggesting Trump is not smart enough to be a dictator will almost certainly do little to allay fears on the political left at home or abroad about a second Trump presidency.After all, Trump has suggested he plans to be a dictator, if only for the first day of his presidency if he were re-elected.Meanwhile, as seeks a second term in the White House, the incumbent Joe Biden has warned that Trump – the lone remaining contender for the Republican nomination – and his allies are “determined to destroy American democracy”. Trump recently provided fuel for that argument by hosting Hungary’s autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.Trump, furthermore, is known to have lavished praise on leaders considered opposed to US democratic ideals and foreign policy interests, including North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and China’s Xi Jinping.Bolton nonetheless claimed Trump – who is grappling with more than 80 pending criminal charges as well as multimillion-dollar civil penalties – lacks the kind of coherent political philosophy effective dictators require. He also said Trump does not like to “get involved in policy analysis or decision-making in the way we normally use those terms”.For Trump, Bolton added: “Everything is episodic, anecdotal, transactional. And everything is contingent on the question of how this will benefit Donald Trump.”Such disparagements from Bolton – who advocated for the Trump White House to withdraw from a deal with Iran aimed at dissuading it from developing nuclear weapons – are not new. In a new foreword to his account of his work for Trump’s presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton warns that Trump was limited to worrying about punishing his personal enemies and appeasing US adversaries Russia and China.“Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton writes. And though he may not think Trump can foster a dictatorship, Bolton has warned: “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”Trump has seemingly leaned into such predictions. He stoked alarm at a campaign rally earlier in March when – while musing about how foreign car production affects the US auto industry – he said: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”His use of the word “bloodbath” recalled provocative language Trump has used previously, including describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country”.He told a rally in New Hampshire last year that he wanted to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.After that remark, Biden attacked Trump for his use of the world “vermin”, saying Trump’s language “echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany” as Adolf Hitler rose to power and orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.In his interview with Le Figaro, Bolton said it was “very likely” that Trump would act on his threat to pull the US out of the Nato military alliance if he were re-elected. In recent months, Trump has repeated his threat not to protect countries whom he believes do not pay enough to maintain the security alliance, and he claimed that European members of the alliance “laugh at the stupidity” of the US.“Trump, when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted, forgets, but eventually comes back to it and acts on it,” Bolton warned. “That’s why leaving Nato is a real possibility. A lot of people think it’s just a negotiating tool, but I don’t think so.” More

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      John Bolton suggests US will leave Nato if ‘erratic’ Trump wins in 2024

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      Ex-national security adviser John Bolton issued harsh remarks against his former boss and the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate, saying that the US will likely withdraw from Nato if Donald Trump wins the election.In an interview with the Hill on Thursday, Bolton criticized the former president’s foreign policy after an op-ed he wrote earlier this week called Trump’s behavior “erratic, irrational and unconstrained”.“Donald Trump doesn’t really have a philosophy, as we understand it in political terms,” Bolton said. “He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space.”Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, also lambasted Trump for his foreign policy legacy with regard to the alliance, saying in the interview: “He threatened the existence of Nato, and I think in a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from Nato.”He also criticized Republicans who have praised Trump for his foreign policy positions. He said: “Those who make these claims about what Trump did in his first term don’t really understand how we got to the places we did. Because many of the things they now give Trump credit for, he wanted to go in the opposite direction.”In Bolton’s op-ed published on Tuesday, he said Trump “disdains knowledge” and accused him of “seeing relations between the United States and foreign lands, especially our adversaries, predominantly as matters of personality”.“Foreign leaders, friend or foe, are far more likely see him as ignorant, inexperienced, braggadocious, longing to be one of the big boys and eminently susceptible to flattery,” Bolton wrote. “These characteristics were a constant source of risk in Trump’s first term, and would be again in a second term.”Bolton condemned Trump for his decision-making, saying: “Beyond acting on inadequate information, reflection or discussion, Trump is also feckless even after making decisions. When things go wrong, or when he simply changes his mind subsequently (a common occurrence), he invariably tries to distance himself from his own decision, fearing negative media coverage or political criticism.”Following his firing in 2019, Bolton published a book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he strongly criticized Trump’s leadership. Earlier this year, Bolton called Trump’s 2024 presidential bid “poison” to the Republican party.Since March, Trump has been criminally charged in connection with hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, with his hoarding of classified documents at his Florida resort, and with allegedly having a hand in illegal efforts to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. More

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicion

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicionFormer national security adviser tells podcast ‘we didn’t feel we would get support’ from president during Russia investigationDonald Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, did not brief the president on suspicions Russia might be behind mysterious “Havana syndrome” attacks on US diplomats because he did not think Trump would support him.‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by foreign adversary, US intelligence saysRead more“Since our concern was that one of the perpetrators – maybe the perpetrator – was Russia,” Bolton said, “we didn’t feel we would get support from President Trump if we said, ‘We think the Russians are coming after American personnel.’”Bolton makes the startling admission in an interview for an episode of a podcast, The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, hosted by the former Guardian journalist Nicky Woolf and released on Monday.Bolton was national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, a period of intense scrutiny on Trump’s relations with Russia, primarily via special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Mueller issued his report in April 2019. He did not prove collusion between Trump and Moscow in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton but the former FBI director did secure indictments of figures close to Trump and lay out extensive evidence of possible obstruction of justice.Trump angrily rejected allegations of wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a witch-hunt. But he also closely courted Vladimir Putin, even seeming, in Helsinki in July 2018, to side with the Russian president against his own intelligence agencies.“Havana syndrome” refers to the investigation of more than 1,000 “anomalous health incidents” involving diplomats, spies and other US government employees around the world. The first cases emerged in 2016.Symptoms have included brain injuries, hearing loss, vertigo and unusual auditory sensations. Speculation about directed energy weapons has persisted, though earlier this month an official report said “available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents”.Havana syndrome got its name because, as Bolton told The Sound, “the first reports came from Cuba [so] it would not be unreasonable to say the Cubans were doing it”.But, he said, “it becomes counterintuitive pretty quickly. If they wanted to keep the American embassy open, you wouldn’t attack it. That tended to show that it was some other government. And a government with more capabilities than we thought the Cubans had.”The Trump administration cracked down on Cuba anyway, returning it to the “state sponsor of terror” list, ending a diplomatic thaw begun by Barack Obama. Bolton, a famous rightwing foreign policy hawk, told The Sound he favoured taking that step anyway, regardless of the origin of the Havana syndrome attacks.He also said he and other national security staffers “felt that because it was possible – not certain, but possible – this emanated from a hostile foreign power and we had our ideas who that might be … we thought more needed to be done to consider that possibility and either find evidence to rule it in or rule it out”.If the attack theory was real, Bolton said, there was “no shortage of evidence that would point to Russia as … at least the top suspect”.Nonetheless, he said, he decided not to take that suspicion to Trump.“Who knows what he would’ve said,” Bolton said of his decision not to brief Trump on his suspicions about Russia and Havana syndrome.“He might’ve said, ‘Do nothing at all.’ I didn’t want to chance that, because I did feel it was serious.”Trump fired Bolton in September 2019. The following year, Bolton released a book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he was highly critical of his former boss. Trump sought to prevent publication. Bolton has said he could run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if it is a way to stop Trump, who he has called “poison” to the Republican party.Speaking to The Sound, Bolton suggested the decision not to brief Trump about suspicions about Russia damaged attempts to investigate the Havana syndrome mystery.“When you don’t have the ability to bring the hammer down and say, ‘Find the answer out,’ … it’s much easier for the bureaucracy to resist.”TopicsDonald TrumpJohn BoltonTrump administrationTrump-Russia investigationUS politicsUS national securityUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      Never Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’

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      ReviewNever Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’ The former secretary of state wants to be president. His vicious memoir will sell, but he may not find buyers at the pollsMike Pompeo is prescient, at least. Back in 2016, as a congressman, he warned Kansas Republicans of the danger posed by Donald Trump. Pompeo lamented that the US had already endured more than seven years of “an authoritarian president who ignored our constitution” – meaning Barack Obama – and cautioned that a Trump presidency would be no different.Schiff calls Mike Pompeo ‘failed Trump lackey’ after classified records claimRead more“It’s time to turn down the lights on the circus,” he said.Pompeo is an ex-army captain who graduated first in his class at West Point. But in the face of Trump’s triumphs, he turned tail and sucked-up. Pompeo was CIA director then secretary of state. On the job, his sycophancy grew legendary.“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass,” a former ambassador recalled to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker.Never Give an Inch is Pompeo’s opening salvo in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. On cue, he puckers up to Trump, the only declared candidate so far, and thanks Mike Pence, a likely contestant, for bringing him into the fold. But where others are concerned, Never Give an Inch doubles as a burn book.Pompeo strafes two other possible contenders: Nikki Haley, Trump’s first United Nations ambassador, and John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser.Trump, Pompeo says, branded Bolton a “scumbag loser”. Pompeo thinks Bolton should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. The Room Where it Happened, Bolton’s tell-all book, evidently ruffled feathers. As for Pompeo’s own relationship with classified documents? “I don’t believe I have anything classified.” It’s not exactly a blanket denial.Turning to Haley, Pompeo dings her time as UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and her performance in that post.“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” he observes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”Trump is largely spared criticism but his family isn’t. Ivanka Trump makes a dubious cameo. Jared Kushner is depicted as someone less than serious.Pompeo edited the Harvard Law Review. He can write. His memoir is tart and tight. Filled with barbs, bile and little regret, it is an unexpectedly interesting read. It is not the typical pre-presidential campaign autobiography. This one comes with teeth. Pompeo is always self-serving but never bland.He heaps praise on Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and has kind words for Volodymyr Zelenskiy.“I’m troubled by the evil that has befallen his country,” Pompeo writes of Ukraine, a year into the Russian invasion. He also says he is “encouraged” that Zelenskiy, a “onetime Jerry Seinfeld” has “turned into a kind of General Patton”.But while Pompeo deploys the word “authoritarian” more than a dozen times, he never does so in reference to Trump. Trump, remember, has lauded Vladimir Putin as “smart”; praised the Russian president’s war strategy as “wonderful” and “genius”; derided Nato as “dumb”; and unloaded on Joe Biden as “weak”.Pompeo, the brown-noser-in-chief, has zero to say about this.As for Netanyahu, Pompeo is silent on Trump’s reported “fuck him” for the Israeli leader. No Trump appointee has ever dared grapple with that breach of decorum.Pompeo is happy, of course, to blame Obama for alienating Viktor Orban from the US and western Europe, and to sympathize with the Hungarian leader’s efforts to “root his time in office in his nation’s history and Christian faith”. Pompeo’s loyalties are clear. In Hungary this week, Yair Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s son, slammed George Soros, the “global elite” and “radical leftist” control of the media.Pompeo is a fan of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s defeated former leader, who he says “largely modeled his candidacy for president on President Trump”. Words written, presumably, before the mini January 6 in Brasília. Birds of a feather, etc.Pompeo also takes Pope Francis and the Catholic church to task over their relationship with China, and derides both the reformist Pope John XXIII and the liberation theology movement of the 1970s. In 2014, five decades after his death, John XXIII was canonized. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, blurbed Pompeo’s book.As expected, Pompeo basically ignores the insurrection Trump stoked and the attack on Congress it produced. He refers to “mayhem at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 and targets the “left” for looking to exploit the day’s events, but says nothing of Trump’s concerted effort to subvert democracy and overturn an election.Pompeo knows the GOP base. Three in five Republicans believe voter fraud birthed Biden’s victory. The same number say Trump did nothing wrong on January 6. Not surprisingly, Pompeo omits mention of his own tweets that day or his appearance before the House January 6 committee.“The storming of the US Capitol today is unacceptable,” Pompeo tweeted. “Lawlessness and rioting here or around the world is always unacceptable. Let us swiftly bring justice to the criminals who engaged in this rioting.”Asked about the tweets by committee staff, he responded: “I stand by it.”He also told Liz Cheney, on the record: “I thought the courts and the certification that took place were appropriate … the vice-president [Pence] made the right decision on the evening of 6 January” to certify Biden’s win.None of this appears on the page. Instead, Pompeo gleefully recalls how Trump approved of his loyalty.How well is all this working? Pompeo may well sell books but fail to move the needle. Polls show him at 1% in the notional presidential primary, tied with the likes of Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, and Ted Cruz, the Senate’s own squeegee pest. Pompeo trails Haley and Pence.The appetite for a Pompeo presidency seems … limited. Like Ron DeSantis, he is grim and humorless. Unlike the governor of Florida, Pompeo has no war chest.
      Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love is published in the US by HarperCollins
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksMike PompeoTrump administrationDonald TrumpRepublicansUS elections 2024reviewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book says

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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book saysIn book aimed at 2024 run, ex-secretary of state also says Trump asked him to be secretary of defense at same time, a ‘nutty idea’ In a new memoir peppered with broadsides at potential rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, accuses Nikki Haley of plotting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to be named vice-president, even while she served as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreDescribing his own anger when Haley secured a personal Oval Office meeting with Trump without checking with him, Pompeo writes that Haley in fact “played” Trump’s then chief of staff, John Kelly, and instead of meeting the president alone, was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers.“As best Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes, “they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”The gossipy nugget is contained in Pompeo’s new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.The Haley story is not the only startling scene in a book which also says Trump had the “nutty idea” that Pompeo could be secretary of state and secretary of defense at the same time.But the story about Haley is firmly in the vein of Washington reportage and tell-alls that Pompeo claims to disdain. It also adds weight to stories which said Trump did indeed consider dumping his vice-president, Mike Pence, for Haley, a rumor Trump was compelled to deny in 2019.It will also add to intrigue around reports that Kushner’s family is fundraising for Haley ahead of her 2024 run.A year out from the primary, Trump is still the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination. But jockeying for position is increasing. Among campaign books from possible contenders, Pompeo follows Pence into print but is a month ahead of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is Trump’s only serious polling rival.Pompeo is studiedly respectful in his descriptions of Pence, a self-proclaimed fellow devout Christian, and mostly of Trump himself. Unlike Pence in his memoir, So Help Me God, Pompeo avoids overt criticism of his former boss. Pompeo is also more comfortable with the former president’s often vulgar language.For instance, Pompeo describes Trump calling John Bolton, his third national security adviser, a “scumbag loser”. After being fired, Bolton produced a memoir of his own, The Room Where It Happened. Trump sought to prevent publication but the book was a bestseller, relaying the president’s private conversations and what Pompeo considers highly sensitive material.Bolton has now floated a White House run of his own, to try to block Trump. Pompeo fires salvos Bolton’s way, at one point comparing him to Edward Snowden, who leaked surveillance secrets to the media in 2013, but saying the National Security Agency contractor “at least had the decency not to lie about his motive”.Bolton, Pompeo writes, should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. Pompeo also says he hopes one day to testify at Bolton’s trial on criminal charges.Regarding Haley, who has also published books as she considers a presidential run, Pompeo disparages both the role of UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and Haley’s performance in it.“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”Haley resigned – or, in Pompeo’s words, “flat-out threw in the towel” – in October 2018. By quitting, Pompeo writes, Haley “abandoned” Trump as she had “the great people of South Carolina”, by resigning as governor.True to his title, Pompeo does not give an inch in his descriptions of his own success, first as CIA director and then atop the state department.But the former soldier and congressman does spill details of a private conversation in which, he says, the president’s chief of staff said Trump wanted him to add secretary of defense to his portfolio while remaining secretary of state.According to Pompeo, on 19 July 2020, midway through the tempestuous summer of the coronavirus pandemic and protests for racial justice, Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told him Mark Esper was “not going to make it” at the Pentagon for much longer.So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead morePompeo says Meadows told him Trump wanted his secretary of state to “dual hat”, meaning to “take on leading the department of defense as an additional duty”.Pompeo says he told Meadows that was “a nutty idea” as he had “plenty” to do at state and “couldn’t possibly command defense at the same time”.Nor, Pompeo writes, was that the only time Trump asked him to do two jobs. After Bolton left, he writes, “someone had reminded the president that Henry Kissinger had been both national security adviser and secretary of state” to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.“President Trump pitched the idea to me,” Pompeo writes. “I think he was half-kidding.”Trump may not feel in a kidding mood when he reads Pompeo’s descriptions of such “nutty ideas” which, the former secretary of state writes, quickly “faded, all for the good”.TopicsBooksUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpTrump administrationMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s act is ‘old and tired’, says his own former national security adviser

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      Trump’s act is ‘old and tired’, says his own former national security adviserJohn Bolton is latest ex-White House official to condemn former boss and says Republicans are ready for a ‘fresh face’ John Bolton, former national security adviser to Donald Trump, has described the former US president’s act as “old and tired” and said the Republican party is ready to move on to a “fresh face”.Bolton is the latest ex-White House official to condemn Trump after Republicans underperformed in this month’s midterm elections, which added to a losing streak that convinced some he is now hurting rather than helping the party.“There are a lot of reasons to be against Trump being the nominee but the one I’m hearing now as I call around the country, talking to my supporters and others about what happened on 8 November, is the number of people who have just switched Trump off in their brain,” Bolton told the Guardian.Trump campaign announcement deepens Republicans’ civil warRead more“Even if they loved his style, loved his approach, loved his policies, loved everything about him, they don’t want to lose and the fear is, given the results on 8 November, that if he got the nomination, not only would he lose the general election, but he would take an awful lot of Republican candidates down with him.”Now 74, Bolton served as US ambassador to the UN under President George W Bush in 2005-06 and was a staunch advocate of the Iraq war. He became Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 only to be fired the following year, then wrote a scathing memoir that declared the president incompetent and unfit for office.He now joins Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, attorney general William Barr, UN ambassador Nikki Haley, chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and onetime ally Chris Christie in a growing rebellion among alumni making the case – overtly or subtly – that Trump has become an electoral liability.They point out that Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018, the presidency and Senate in 2020 and the Senate again in 2022, while gaining a smaller-than-expected majority in the House. Paul Ryan, the most recent Republican speaker of the House, blamed the Trump factor, telling ABC News’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos: “I think it’s palpable right now. We get past Trump, we start winning elections. We stick with Trump, we keep losing elections.”Last week Trump announced his third consecutive run for the White House only for his headaches to be compounded when the attorney general, Merrick Garland, named a special counsel to lead the federal investigations into his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and removal of classified documents from the White House.Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’Read moreYet the 76-year-old former president still commands a chunk of fervent and significant support in the Republican base. His power and influence were evident in Republican primary elections where many of his anointed candidates prevailed over establishment figures such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming.Bolton acknowledged: “There’s no doubt Trump’s endorsement in the primary can be very valuable to a candidate in the Republican party. But relying on that endorsement or trumpeting yourself as the Trump-endorsed candidate is poisonous in the general election. So if you actually want to win elections, Trump is not the answer.“William F Buckley [the conservative author] once had a rule that in Republican primaries he supported the most conservative candidate capable of winning the general election and, under that theory, Trump loses.”Bolton said he has conducted his own polling that shows Trump’s base within the party has been declining slowly but steadily for two years.He said: “One question we asked was: do you want Trump or do you want a fresh face? I think in our last poll over 50% said they wanted a fresh face. That’s only going to continue. I personally don’t think Biden is going to end up running on the Democratic side and that’ll have an impact as well.”Pence, Pompeo and Christie are among potential challengers to Trump for the 2024 nomination but the early frontrunner is Ron DeSantis, who delivered a “red wave” to Florida when he was easily re-elected as governor. DeSantis is a former navy lawyer who served at the base in Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq.His foreign policy positions are likely to sit well with Bolton and other foreign policy hawks. DeSantis has condemned Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, expressed opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and taken a hard line on China, Cuba and Venezuela. In 2019 he reminded his followers that he had “promised to be the most pro-Israel governor in America”.Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreBolton said he first met DeSantis before the latter first ran for Congress in 2012. He noted that DeSantis’s roommate in Iraq was Adam Laxalt, who worked for Bolton in the Bush state department and narrowly lost an election for the Senate in Nevada earlier this month.DeSantis has “had a very successful run as governor of Florida”, he said. “He won re-election on 8 November with a big majority. A lot of people look to him as the next generation candidate. That’s one of Trump’s biggest problems – his act is old and tired now.”But Bolton, who has his own Pac and Super Pac to raise funds for Republicans, insisted he was not yet throwing his weight behind any 2024 contenders. “I would certainly be available and happy to talk to any of the candidates that wanted to talk about foreign policy and happy to help me make them all be better prepared to be the nominee.”The next primary could also expose and exacerbate a foreign policy split in the Republican party between an interventionist wing, personified by Bolton and Liz Cheney, and “America first” isolationism embodied by Trump and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has called for a halt to funding Ukraine’s fight against Russia.Bolton, founder of the Foundation for American Security and Freedom, commented: “Within the party as a whole, support for the Ukrainian government and people are overwhelming. I do plan to spend some time in the next two years working against what I would call the virus of isolationism within the Republican party to make sure it does not become a serious force.”TopicsUS politicsJohn BoltonDonald TrumpRepublicansUS elections 2024Reuse this content More

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      John Bolton says he ‘helped plan coups d’etat’ in other countries

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      John Bolton says he ‘helped plan coups d’etat’ in other countriesFormer national security adviser to Donald Trump says US Capitol attack was not a coup because it was not carefully planned John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump and before that ambassador to the United Nations under George W Bush, said on Tuesday he helped plan coup attempts in other countries.January 6 testimony tells chilling tale of democracy hanging by a threadRead moreSpeaking to CNN after the day’s January 6 committee hearing, Bolton said it was wrong to describe Trump’s attempt to stay in power after the 2020 election as a coup.He said: “While nothing Donald Trump did after the election, in connection with the lie about the election fraud, none of it is defensible, it’s also a mistake as some people have said including on the committee, the commentators that somehow this was a carefully planned coup d’etat to the constitution.“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things. It’s rambling from one half-vast idea to another plan that falls through and another comes up.”His host, Jake Tapper, said: “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”Bolton said: “I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but you know, other places. It takes a lot of work and that’s not what [Trump] did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another.“Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol, as to that there’s no doubt, but not to overthrow the constitution, to buy more time to throw the matter back to the states to try and redo the issue.“And if you don’t believe that you’re going to overreact, and I think that’s a real risk for the committee, which has done a lot of good work.”Jake Tapper: “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”John Bolton: “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work.” pic.twitter.com/REyqh3KtHi— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 12, 2022
      Tapper returned to Bolton’s remark about having helped plan coups.Bolton said: “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”Tapper asked: “Successful coups?”Bolton said: “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in in the book and it turned out not to be successful.“Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president and they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable.”Bolton devotes considerable space to Venezuela policy in The Room Where It Happened, his 2020 memoir of his work for Trump.In 2019, the US supported the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s call for the military to back his ultimately failed attempt to oust the socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, arguing Maduro’s re-election was illegitimate.Before Bolton joined the Trump administration, it was widely reported that Trump wanted to use the US military to oust Maduro. In August 2017, Trump told reporters: “We have many options for Venezuela, this is our neighbour.”Among other gambits, Bolton’s book describes work with the British government to freeze Venezuelan gold deposits in the Bank of England.In his newsletter, The Racket, Jonathan M Katz, author of the book Gangsters of Capitalism, said: “The United States has indeed sponsored and participated in lots of coups and foreign government overthrows, dating back to the turn of the 20th century [and] Bolton was personally involved in many of the recent efforts – in Nicaragua, Iraq, Haiti and others”.But, Katz added: “Generally, officials do not admit that sort of thing on camera.”The Room Where It Happened review: John Bolton fires broadside that could sink TrumpRead moreKatz wrote: “Keep in mind that throughout the 2019 crisis, Bolton insisted that the Trump administration’s support for … Guaidó … was anything but a coup. He literally stood in front of the White House at the height of the affair and told reporters: “This is clearly not a coup!”In those remarks, in April 2019, Bolton said: “We recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela.“And just as it’s not a coup when the president of the United States gives an order to the Department of Defense, it’s not a coup for Juan Guaidó to try and take command of the Venezuelan military.“We want as our principal objective the peaceful transfer of power but I will say again, as [Trump] has said from the outset, and Nicolas Maduro and those supporting him, particularly those who are not Venezuelan, should know, all options are on the table.”On CNN, Tapper said: “I feel like there’s like this other stuff you’re not telling me.”Bolton said: “I think I’m sure there is.”TopicsJohn BoltonDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsVenezuelaAmericasnewsReuse this content More