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

    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

    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

    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

    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

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    Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton says

    Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRevelation from former national security adviser raises pressure on Trump as lawmakers investigate gaps in January 6 call logs John Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.Bolton’s intervention compounds Trump’s difficulties amid a billowing controversy relating to seven hours and 37 minutes that are missing in official call logs. The gap occurs in records made for 6 January last year – the day of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol.The Washington Post and CBS News disclosed on Tuesday that the House committee investigating the insurrection is looking into a “possible cover-up” of the White House records. Documents originally held by the National Archives and turned over to the committee earlier this year showed a gap in Trump’s phone calls spanning precisely the period when hundreds of his supporters stormed the Capitol building.Records show long gap in Trump phone logs as January 6 violence unfoldedRead moreThe news outlets, which obtained 11 pages of records including Trump’s official daily diary and a call log for the White House switchboard, reported that the House panel has begun an investigation into whether Trump used disposable “burner phones” to sidestep scrutiny.In a statement to the Post/CBS News, Trump said: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.”Not true, according to Bolton. In an interview with the Post/CBS News, the former national security adviser said that he recalled Trump “using the term ‘burner phones’ in several discussions and that Trump was aware of its meaning”.Bolton added that he and Trump had spoken “about how people have used ‘burner phones’ to avoid having their calls scrutinized,” according to Robert Costa, author of the Post/CBS News revelations along with Bob Woodward.At the heart of the January 6 committee investigation is whether Trump was directly involved in coordinating the breach of security at the Capitol on the day that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was to be certified by Congress. What Trump did, and whom he talked to, as the insurrection was unfolding is central to the inquiry.The call logs obtained by the committee show that Trump spoke to several close associates on the morning of January 6, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former senior adviser Steve Bannon. His daily diary shows an entry at 11.17 am for a phone call with “an unidentified person”, but after that the records fall silent.The next phone log is at 6.54pm when Trump asked the White House switchboard to put him through to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.In those intervening 457 minutes Trump supporters and white supremacist groups had broken through police barricades, forcing vice-president Mike Pence, who was overseeing the certification process, into hiding. A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the attack with more than 100 law enforcement officers injured.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsJohn BoltonnewsReuse this content More

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    Insurrection and inauguration: Joe Biden's new political era – video

    Following the US Capitol riot, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to Washington DC for the week of Joe Biden’s inauguration to find a downtown area under what is essentially military occupation and a city coming to terms with the trauma of Donald Trump’s final days in office. 
    They speak to lifelong residents in the outer suburbs as well the US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who tells of her harrowing experience of the 6 January riot. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton rails against criticisms of the Republican administration’s handling of the domestic terrorism threat
    ‘I didn’t know if I would make it out that day’: Ilhan Omar on the terror of the Capitol attack More

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    'A disgrace': former aide John Bolton slams Donald Trump's early win claim – video

    The former Trump US national security adviser John Bolton has said the president’s premature claim of victory in the election is ‘a disgrace’.
    Early on Wednesday, Trump said he would take the election to the supreme court to stop votes being counted. He falsely claimed victory, as the election remained too close to call with millions of votes yet to be counted
    US election 2020: Joe Biden has narrow lead over Trump in Wisconsin as result awaited – live updates
    US braces for long wait for election results as Trump falsely declares victory More

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    'Let me finish': John Bolton clashes with BBC journalist Emily Maitlis over Trump – video

    John Bolton, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, gets into heated exchanges with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis over why he did not appear at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. He repeatedly tells Maitlis to ‘let him finish’, and blames House Democrats for empowering Trump when they failed to convict him during the impeachment trial. Maitlis also pressed Bolton on why he worked alongside Trump despite admitting he saw him as corrupt and a threat to American security More