Bolton alleges that Trump told China building camps for Muslims was "exactly the right thing to do"

Bailey · Jun 18, 2020

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-told-chinas-president-building-201443257.html

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account.

The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

In a private meeting during the 2019 G20 meeting in Japan, Trump and Xi were accompanied only by their interpreters, according to Bolton's book, parts of which were published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

The Chinese Communist Party has long been criticized for its construction of large concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of ethnic minority Uighur Muslims are believed to be detained under the guise of a counterterrorism campaign. Inside the roughly 465 camps in Xinjiang and the surrounding region, 2 million to 3 million Uighur Muslims are under surveillance and subject to mandatory "reeducation" training. One survivor said that people in the camps were beaten, subjected to medical experiments, and even forced to watch gang rapes.

The camps have been criticized by the White House, and lawmakers from both parties have condemned the practice. Trump walked back his reluctance to take action against China for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims and signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday.

The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was overwhelmingly approved by both chambers and calls for sanctions against officials involved with the camps.

"Beijing's barbarous actions targeting the Uyghur people are an outrage to the collective conscious of the world," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in May. "This House of Representatives, in a very strong bipartisan way, we are sending a message to the persecuted that they are not forgotten. We're saying to the president of China: you may tell these people that they are forgotten, but they aren't."

China has continued to deny that the Uighur Muslims have been mistreated and claims that the notion "blatantly smears China's counterterrorism and deradicalization measures and seriously interferes in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the US to immediately rectify its mistake, stop using Xinjiang-related issues to intervene in China's internal affairs and refrain from going even further down the wrong path," the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Bolton's book has sent shockwaves through Washington and the political sphere. The former national security adviser accuses the House of Representatives of "impeachment malpractice" in his memoir and says Trump engaged in far more objectionable conduct than just what he was impeached for.

In one section of the book, Bolton described how Trump "pleaded" with Xi for China to purchase US agricultural products to help him win reelection in 2020.

"He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.

In an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal, Bolton added that "Trump's conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump's mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests."

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security," the former national security adviser said. "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."

Bolton said the president's actions related to his China policy "formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency."

"Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump's behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different," the former national security adviser wrote.
Click to expand...

Horrifying if true.

Fisherman's Worf · Jun 18, 2020

Bailey said: ↑

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-told-chinas-president-building-201443257.html

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account.

The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

In a private meeting during the 2019 G20 meeting in Japan, Trump and Xi were accompanied only by their interpreters, according to Bolton's book, parts of which were published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

The Chinese Communist Party has long been criticized for its construction of large concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of ethnic minority Uighur Muslims are believed to be detained under the guise of a counterterrorism campaign. Inside the roughly 465 camps in Xinjiang and the surrounding region, 2 million to 3 million Uighur Muslims are under surveillance and subject to mandatory "reeducation" training. One survivor said that people in the camps were beaten, subjected to medical experiments, and even forced to watch gang rapes.

The camps have been criticized by the White House, and lawmakers from both parties have condemned the practice. Trump walked back his reluctance to take action against China for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims and signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday.

The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was overwhelmingly approved by both chambers and calls for sanctions against officials involved with the camps.

"Beijing's barbarous actions targeting the Uyghur people are an outrage to the collective conscious of the world," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in May. "This House of Representatives, in a very strong bipartisan way, we are sending a message to the persecuted that they are not forgotten. We're saying to the president of China: you may tell these people that they are forgotten, but they aren't."

China has continued to deny that the Uighur Muslims have been mistreated and claims that the notion "blatantly smears China's counterterrorism and deradicalization measures and seriously interferes in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the US to immediately rectify its mistake, stop using Xinjiang-related issues to intervene in China's internal affairs and refrain from going even further down the wrong path," the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Bolton's book has sent shockwaves through Washington and the political sphere. The former national security adviser accuses the House of Representatives of "impeachment malpractice" in his memoir and says Trump engaged in far more objectionable conduct than just what he was impeached for.

In one section of the book, Bolton described how Trump "pleaded" with Xi for China to purchase US agricultural products to help him win reelection in 2020.

"He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.

In an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal, Bolton added that "Trump's conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump's mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests."

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security," the former national security adviser said. "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."

Bolton said the president's actions related to his China policy "formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency."

"Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump's behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different," the former national security adviser wrote.
Click to expand...

Horrifying if true.
Click to expand...

But not unsurprising, given Trump (a) hates Muslims and (b) is doing the same thing to Latin Americans.

RickDeckard · Jun 18, 2020

oldfella1962 said:

But Biden.
Click to expand...

Tuckerfan · Jun 18, 2020

圣骑士喜出望外

oldfella1962 · Jun 18, 2020

The Night Funky said: ↑

圣骑士喜出望外
Click to expand...

couldn't have said it better myself......I guess. This could be Bolton trying to sell books but who knows? If he did say it he's wrong no doubt.

TheLonelySquire · Jun 18, 2020

I'm fully expecting Lebron to speak out against this outrage!

TheLonelySquire · Jun 18, 2020

The Night Funky said: ↑

圣骑士喜出望外
Click to expand...

Could you add duck sauce to that order, please?

TheLonelySquire · Jun 18, 2020

Fisherman's Worf said: ↑

Bailey said: ↑

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-told-chinas-president-building-201443257.html

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account.

The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

In a private meeting during the 2019 G20 meeting in Japan, Trump and Xi were accompanied only by their interpreters, according to Bolton's book, parts of which were published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

The Chinese Communist Party has long been criticized for its construction of large concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of ethnic minority Uighur Muslims are believed to be detained under the guise of a counterterrorism campaign. Inside the roughly 465 camps in Xinjiang and the surrounding region, 2 million to 3 million Uighur Muslims are under surveillance and subject to mandatory "reeducation" training. One survivor said that people in the camps were beaten, subjected to medical experiments, and even forced to watch gang rapes.

The camps have been criticized by the White House, and lawmakers from both parties have condemned the practice. Trump walked back his reluctance to take action against China for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims and signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday.

The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was overwhelmingly approved by both chambers and calls for sanctions against officials involved with the camps.

"Beijing's barbarous actions targeting the Uyghur people are an outrage to the collective conscious of the world," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in May. "This House of Representatives, in a very strong bipartisan way, we are sending a message to the persecuted that they are not forgotten. We're saying to the president of China: you may tell these people that they are forgotten, but they aren't."

China has continued to deny that the Uighur Muslims have been mistreated and claims that the notion "blatantly smears China's counterterrorism and deradicalization measures and seriously interferes in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the US to immediately rectify its mistake, stop using Xinjiang-related issues to intervene in China's internal affairs and refrain from going even further down the wrong path," the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Bolton's book has sent shockwaves through Washington and the political sphere. The former national security adviser accuses the House of Representatives of "impeachment malpractice" in his memoir and says Trump engaged in far more objectionable conduct than just what he was impeached for.

In one section of the book, Bolton described how Trump "pleaded" with Xi for China to purchase US agricultural products to help him win reelection in 2020.

"He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.

In an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal, Bolton added that "Trump's conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump's mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests."

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security," the former national security adviser said. "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."

Bolton said the president's actions related to his China policy "formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency."

"Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump's behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different," the former national security adviser wrote.
Click to expand...

Horrifying if true.
Click to expand...

But not unsurprising, given Trump is doing the same thing to Latin Americans.
Click to expand...

I just told my wife that President Trump hates her. Now she'll vote for Biden I'm sure.

oldfella1962 · Jun 18, 2020

TheLonelySquire said: ↑

The Night Funky said: ↑

圣骑士喜出望外
Click to expand...

Could you add duck sauce to that order, please?
Click to expand...

We Are Borg · Jun 18, 2020

My post from the other thread on Trump:

I don't have a lot of use for former Trump officials who "tell all" after they've left office.

Cowards.

Stand up and do the right thing when it counts.

Not when you can make a few bucks.

(Still doesn't alter my opinion of Trump, and I doubt Bolton's book will change anyone's mind anyway.)

steve2^4 · Jun 18, 2020

my post from the other thread.

steve2^4 said: ↑

Excerpts from Bolton's book. I've copied the NYTimes article if you don't have access. It's worth a read. Gives his excuse for not testifying before the house.

John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, plans to publish a damning book next week depicting President Trump as a corrupt, poorly informed, reckless leader who used the power of his office to advance his own personal and political needs even ahead of the nation’s interests.

The book, “The Room Where It Happened,” describes Mr. Bolton’s 17 turbulent months at Mr. Trump’s side through a multitude of crises and foreign policy challenges, but attention has focused mainly on his assertions that the president took a variety of actions that should have been investigated for possible impeachment beyond just the pressure campaign on Ukraine to incriminate Democrats.

Mr. Bolton, who did not testify during House proceedings and whose offer to testify in the Senate trial was blocked by Republicans, confirms many crucial elements of the Ukraine scheme that got Mr. Trump impeached in December. He also asserts that the president was willing to intervene in criminal investigations to curry favor with foreign dictators. And he says that Mr. Trump pleaded with China’s president to help him win re-election by buying American crops grown in key farm states.

Here are some of the highlights:

An offer of firsthand evidence on the Ukraine matter.
The book offers firsthand evidence that Mr. Trump linked his suspension of $391 million in security aid for Ukraine to his demands that Ukraine publicly announce investigations into supposed wrongdoing by Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the heart of the impeachment case against the president.

They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.

Mr. Bolton otherwise confirms testimony offered by his former Russia adviser, Fiona Hill, that he objected to the “drug deal” being cooked up by Mr. Trump’s associates to force Ukraine to help and that he called Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was hip deep in the affair, “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.” He writes that he suspected that Mr. Giuliani had personal business interests at stake and adds that he had the matter reported to the White House Counsel’s Office.

“I thought the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Was it a factor in my later resignation? Yes, but as one of many ‘straws’ that contributed to my departure.”

Explaining a lack of testimony, and placing blame on Democrats.
As the book nears publication and details spill out, many congressional Democrats quickly assailed Mr. Bolton for not telling his story during the impeachment proceedings and instead saving it for his $2 million book.

voted to block new testimony by him and any other witnesses even after The New York Times reported that his forthcoming book would confirm the quid pro quo. Some of those Republican senators said that even if Mr. Bolton was correct, it would not be enough in their minds to justify making Mr. Trump the first president in American history convicted and removed from office.

Mr. Bolton blames House Democrats for being in a rush rather than waiting for the court system to rule on whether witnesses like him should testify, and he faults them for narrowing their inquiry to just the Ukraine matter rather than building a broader case with more examples of misconduct by the president.

“Had a Senate majority agreed to call witnesses and had I testified, I am convinced, given the environment then existing because of the House’s impeachment malpractice, that it would have made no significant difference in the Senate outcome,” he writes.

Singling out episodes of “obstruction of justice as a way of life.”
The other episodes that Mr. Bolton says the House should have investigated include Mr. Trump’s willingness to intervene in Justice Department investigations against foreign companies to “give personal favors to dictators he liked.” Mr. Bolton said it appeared to be “obstruction of justice as a way of life.”

He singles out Halkbank of Turkey, a state-owned financial institution investigated for a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade American sanctions on Iran. At a side encounter during a Buenos Aires summit meeting in late 2018, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey handed Mr. Trump a memo by the law firm representing Halkbank, “which Trump did nothing more than flip through before declaring he believed Halkbank was totally innocent.” He then told Mr. Erdogan “he would take care of things.”

later spent months trying to negotiate a settlement with the bank, but that came to an end in October, after Mr. Bolton left office, when the Justice Department charged Halkbank in a six-count indictment.

China, Mr. Trump offered to lighten the penalties.

“Xi replied that if that were done, he would owe Trump a favor and Trump immediately responded he was doing this because of Xi,” Mr. Bolton writes. He called himself “appalled” and “stunned” by the idea of intervening in a criminal investigation to let a sanctions buster off the hook. In the end, at Mr. Trump’s behest, the Justice Department accepted a $1 billion fine and lifted a seven-year ban on buying American products, an act of lenience that saved the company from going out of business.

A new allegation in the book accuses Mr. Trump of “pleading” with Mr. Xi to help him win re-election by buying American agricultural products, which would help the president in farm states. Mr. Trump did not deny it when asked about the matter on Wednesday night by Sean Hannity on Fox News, but Robert Lighthizer, his trade representative, did on his behalf earlier in the day, saying it was not true.

Describing a toxic environment inside the administration.
Over a long career in and out of Republican administrations in Washington, Mr. Bolton has rarely shied from giving his opinions, usually born of strong conservative national security convictions that have made him one of the capital’s most outspoken hawks advocating the use of military power and sanctions.

While he agreed with Mr. Trump on issues like getting out of the nuclear accord with Iran, he found himself repeatedly trying to stop the president from making concessions to other rogue states or making an ill-considered peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan while pushing for a more robust use of force against outliers like Iran or Syria. He considered Mr. Trump’s diplomacy to be folly.

To Mr. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s decision to meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore was a “foolish mistake,” and the president’s desire to then invite Mr. Kim to the White House was “a potential disaster of enormous magnitude.” A series of presidential Twitter posts about China and North Korea were “mostly laughable.” Mr. Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki was a “self-inflicted wound” and “Putin had to be laughing uproariously at what he had gotten away with in Helsinki.”

John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, disparaged the departing adviser, H.R. McMaster, by saying, “The president hasn’t had a national security adviser in the past year and he needs one.” Mr. Pompeo, the book says, disparaged Nikki R. Haley, then the ambassador to the United Nations, calling her “light as a feather.”

Battling over what is deemed classified information.
The Justice Department has gone to court to stop the book from being published, arguing that it has classified information in it and that it was not cleared by a prepublication review required of former government officials like Mr. Bolton.

In fact, according to his lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, Mr. Bolton participated in an extensive back-and-forth over the book and agreed to all of the revisions mandated by the career official who reviewed it or came up with acceptable alternatives. Only when the review was over did another official, Michael J. Ellis, a political appointee, step in to review it all over again at the instruction of Robert C. O’Brien, Mr. Bolton’s successor as national security adviser.

If there is classified information still in the book, it is hard to figure out what it might be. There are not references to secret intelligence programs or espionage sources and methods. But Mr. Trump insisted this week that every conversation with him was “highly classified” and therefore could not be disclosed, an assertion that goes far beyond tradition.

In his epilogue, Mr. Bolton says that in a few cases, “I was prevented from conveying information that I thought was not properly classifiable, since it revealed information that can only be described as embarrassing to Trump or as indicative of possible impermissible behavior.” One example is the direct quote of what Mr. Trump said to Mr. Xi about helping him win re-election.

For the most part, though, Mr. Bolton explains in the epilogue that the career official who reviewed the book merely made him take quotation marks off things that the president said and otherwise generally left them in. And so Mr. Bolton offers a guide to readers: “In some cases, just put your own quotation marks around the relevant passages; you won’t go far wrong.”
Click to expand...

Click to expand...

And the Wapo review:

John Bolton’s book is full of startling revelations he should have told us sooner

Then-national security adviser John Bolton speaks to reporters outside the White House in 2019. His book, “The Room Where It Happened,” eviscerates Trump’s foreign policy record and exposes the president, in Bolton’s words, as “stunningly uninformed.” (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord,” reads a famous passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. John Bolton has provided a secular version of that cosmic payback in his account of Donald Trump’s presidency, “The Room Where It Happened.”

As much as you think you know about the arrogance, vanity and sheer incompetence of Trump’s years in the White House, Bolton’s account will still astonish you. He narrates his 17 months as national security adviser in remarkable detail. He seems to have collated every Trump rant, reckless phone call, and muttered aside. No wonder the White House was so determined to block this book: It eviscerates Trump’s foreign policy record and exposes him, in Bolton’s words, as “stunningly uninformed.”

(Simon & Schuster)
Bolton offers new tidbits about Ukraine, the issue on which Trump was impeached and where Democrats desperately sought Bolton’s testimony. He confirms an aide’s account that Bolton viewed Trump’s Ukraine machinations as a “drug deal,” provides new evidence that “Ukraine security assistance was at risk of being swallowed by the Ukraine fantasy conspiracy theories.” In sum, he says, “the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior.” This account should deeply embarrass Republican senators who offered unblinking defenses of Trump’s Ukraine actions during the impeachment trial.

The great achievement of this book is that it links the Ukraine fiasco to Trump’s other foreign policy misdeeds. Indeed, Bolton argues that the Democrats committed “impeachment malpractice” because the Ukraine focus “provided no opportunity to explore Trump’s ham-handed involvement in other matters . . . that should not properly be subject to manipulation by a President for personal reasons.”

Bolton’s takeaway line: “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.”

Perhaps the most startling new disclosure is that Trump sought political help from China’s Xi Jinping, just as he had expressed support for a Russian email dump in 2016 and Ukrainian political favors in his famous July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to Bolton, in a June 18, 2019, phone called with Xi about trade matters, Trump “then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election . . . pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” Bolton also notes that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at the February 2019 summit in Hanoi said that “he didn’t want Trump to do anything that would harm him politically,” to which Bolton adds in his text, “Oh great,” one of the snarky literary asides scattered throughout the book.

Bolton should have taken these insights about Trump to House impeachment investigators, or surely to Senate impeachment jurors. The closest he seems to have come to seeking accountability was a visit to Attorney General William P. Barr while the Ukraine “drug deal” was unfolding. Bolton says he “wanted to brief him on Trump’s penchant to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” including Xi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. That comment begs for further investigation.

Bolton offers a damning review of nearly every theater of Trump’s foreign policy: His coddling of Kim “made me ill”; his last-minute reversal of a retaliatory strike against Iran after the shoot-down of a U.S. drone was “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do”; his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria was a “huge mistake”; the “slowness and lack of agility” of his Venezuela policy was “painful to watch.”

A veteran bureaucratic infighter, Bolton dishes dirt about everyone he doesn’t like, and it’s a very long list. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley was “untethered” and a “free electron”; former national security adviser Michael Flynn was “inadequate” and “self-destructed”; senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner was a meddler who was “doing international negotiations he shouldn’t have been doing (along with the never-quite-ready Middle East peace plan)”; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was secretive, too willing to make concessions that Trump wanted and so overly subservient to the boss that a pushback on arms control was “a rare occasion of Pompeo’s being explicitly critical of something Trump did.” One intriguing note is how often Pompeo (like Bolton) talked of resigning.

But it’s Jim Mattis who’s Bolton’s favorite punching bag. Every dozen pages there’s another shot at the former secretary of defense . He’s “looking for excuses not to do much of anything” in retaliating against Syrian chemical weapons use; he would “predict gloom and doom when he didn’t get his way” on policy; he used “spite” as a common tactic, prompting Bolton to observe “they didn’t call him ‘Chaos’ for nothing.”

Mattis’s resignation in December 2018 appears to have gratified Bolton. He quotes Trump’s parting line: “He’s leaving . . . I never really liked him.” And Trump’s bizarre claim: “He’s a liberal Democrat, you know that, don’t you?”

Bolton is the hero of nearly every anecdote in the book. Indeed, for a memoir that is startlingly candid about many things, Bolton’s utter lack of self-criticism is one of the book’s significant shortcomings. Nearly every policy discussion is an opportunity for Bolton to say that he was right, people should have listened to him, he knew it would never work, he was vindicated. His only problem is that, having burned so many bridges with this book, Fox News may not give him a future platform to explain how right he is.

Given how long and disastrously Bolton enabled this president, his self-satisfaction becomes annoying. So does Bolton’s trademark disdain for the foreign policy establishment (who he likes to deride as the “High-Minded”). Sometimes, his antagonism toward negotiations is so reflexive, you almost sympathize with Trump’s desire to talk with forbidden adversaries, such as North Korea and Iran.

It’s telling that one of the criticisms Bolton makes about Trump’s opening to North Korea was that he was acting like a diplomat. “The real irony here was how similar Trump was to the Foreign Service.”

Many previous books have revealed Trump’s bizarre machinations and musings, but none so damagingly as this one by a conservative former supporter. At times, Trump rambles during a long flight to Iraq about how he may drop Mike Pence for Nikki Haley as vice president in 2020, and whether he’ll win the Nobel Peace Prize. Discussing Trump’s ever-vacillating views about China, Bolton says, “This was policy by personal whim and impulse.”

As Bolton describes his running conversation with the president, it’s a series of broken records. Trump rambles through repeated tirades about Europeans who don’t pay enough for defense, the perfidy of Mattis who’s trying to box him in, the need to indict John F. Kerry for alleged Logan Act violations for interfering with Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. And most especially, the need to withdraw American troops from Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, South Korea.

The abiding problem, says Bolton, was Trump’s lack of a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish, beyond dominating the news cycle. This was foreign policy by disruption, conditioned on Trump’s view that he could charm or intimidate anyone (seemingly unaware that he was being played by the toughest and most ruthless people in the world).

“Trump was not following any international grand strategy, or even a consistent trajectory,” Bolton observes. “His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy.” Bolton comments at another point: “He opposed ‘endless wars’ in the Middle East but had no coherent plan for what followed withdrawing US forces.”

Perhaps the most damning comment Bolton offers, in the end, isn’t about foreign policy but Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “Trump’s reflex effort to talk his way out of anything . . . even a public-health crisis, only undercut his and the nation’s credibility, with his statements looking more like political damage control than responsible public-health advice.”

John F. Kelly, Trump’s harassed chief of staff, mutters to Bolton at one point, “Has there ever been a presidency like this?” To which Bolton replies tartly: “I assured him there had not.”

This book ought to be a wake-up call, finally, to Republicans who have slavishly defended Trump and belittled his critics. Bolton took his time in telling us the truth, and he should have done more when it was his duty during the impeachment inquiry. But it’s all here. In boxing, you’d call it a knockout punch.
Click to expand...

Jenee · Jun 18, 2020

The Night Funky said: ↑

圣骑士喜出望外
Click to expand...

I missed something. What is Paladin overjoyed about?

steve2^4 · Jun 18, 2020

Paladin's joy seems to be limited to media central these days. And traffic circles.

He's got it in his "status" line and it's in response to Trump's election.

Diacanu · Jun 25, 2020

Strange that this fizzled out at 13 posts.

Oh, I see "we're not racist but...", forge threw their ninja smoke pellets into the room.

Marso · Jun 25, 2020

Bolton's book seems to have been roundly panned by anyone else who was 'in the room.'

It will be interesting, however, to see how long it takes the echo chamber to start pointing to it as 'proof' of orange man bad, when before he was NSA Leftforge pretty much tagged him as a lying scumbag, warmongering cunt.

Diacanu · Jun 25, 2020

How do you like the fancy jets the taxpayers paid for, welfare queen?

steve2^4 · Jun 25, 2020

cleanup on aisle 5!

We hardly need bolton as proof orange man bad, when we have orange man himself demonstrating it.

Bolton's book just makes for fun anecdotes on late night TV.

matthunter · Jun 25, 2020

Marso said: ↑

Bolton's book seems to have been roundly panned by anyone else who was 'in the room.'
Click to expand...

Clarify - anyone else who was in the room and still works for Trump?

Because yeah, I have faith in their ability to stand upright without outside assistance.

spot261 · Jun 25, 2020

Marso said: ↑

Bolton's book seems to have been roundly panned by anyone else who was 'in the room.'

It will be interesting, however, to see how long it takes the echo chamber to start pointing to it as 'proof' of orange man bad, when before he was NSA Leftforge pretty much tagged him as a lying scumbag, warmongering cunt.
Click to expand...

He is a lying scumbag warmongering cunt.

Doesn't mean there's no truth in there, haven't you noticed the trend for people in Trump's inner circle to fall out of favour the moment they criticise him? Have you also not noticed the tendency towards ever more sycophantic advisors? You really expect them to give an honest account?

TheLonelySquire · Jun 25, 2020

TheLonelySquire said: ↑

I'm fully expecting Lebron to speak out against this outrage!
Click to expand...

So wait, @Shirogayne disagrees that Lebron should speak out against racial injustice in China? You know "no blacks in our restaurants!". Isn't she black? Or only cares about our blacks (except myself)?

steve2^4 · Jun 25, 2020

spot261 said: ↑

Marso said: ↑

Bolton's book seems to have been roundly panned by anyone else who was 'in the room.'

It will be interesting, however, to see how long it takes the echo chamber to start pointing to it as 'proof' of orange man bad, when before he was NSA Leftforge pretty much tagged him as a lying scumbag, warmongering cunt.
Click to expand...

He is a lying scumbag warmongering cunt.

Doesn't mean there's no truth in there, haven't you noticed the trend for people in Trump's inner circle to fall out of favour the moment they criticise him? Have you also not noticed the tendency towards ever more sycophantic advisors? You really expect them to give an honest account?
Click to expand...

besides trump himself gave it his seal of truthiness when he sued due to security concerns to have it withheld from publishing.

Tererune · Jun 25, 2020

Bolton had his chance to testify before congress and he didn't. I don't need to pay for him to witness when it does not count. Too late old man, the bus left a while ago.

NAHTMMM · Jun 25, 2020

says Trump engaged in far more objectionable conduct than just what he was impeached for.
Click to expand...

No kiddin'?

TheLonelySquire · Jun 25, 2020

Bailey said: ↑

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-told-chinas-president-building-201443257.html

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account.

The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."

In a private meeting during the 2019 G20 meeting in Japan, Trump and Xi were accompanied only by their interpreters, according to Bolton's book, parts of which were published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," Bolton wrote, citing the interpreter's account. The interpreter added that "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," according to the book.

Bolton also wrote in the book that Matthew Pottinger, a retired US Marine and the current deputy national security adviser, "told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

The Chinese Communist Party has long been criticized for its construction of large concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of ethnic minority Uighur Muslims are believed to be detained under the guise of a counterterrorism campaign. Inside the roughly 465 camps in Xinjiang and the surrounding region, 2 million to 3 million Uighur Muslims are under surveillance and subject to mandatory "reeducation" training. One survivor said that people in the camps were beaten, subjected to medical experiments, and even forced to watch gang rapes.

The camps have been criticized by the White House, and lawmakers from both parties have condemned the practice. Trump walked back his reluctance to take action against China for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims and signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday.

The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was overwhelmingly approved by both chambers and calls for sanctions against officials involved with the camps.

"Beijing's barbarous actions targeting the Uyghur people are an outrage to the collective conscious of the world," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in May. "This House of Representatives, in a very strong bipartisan way, we are sending a message to the persecuted that they are not forgotten. We're saying to the president of China: you may tell these people that they are forgotten, but they aren't."

China has continued to deny that the Uighur Muslims have been mistreated and claims that the notion "blatantly smears China's counterterrorism and deradicalization measures and seriously interferes in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the US to immediately rectify its mistake, stop using Xinjiang-related issues to intervene in China's internal affairs and refrain from going even further down the wrong path," the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, said in a statement, according to The New York Times.

Bolton's book has sent shockwaves through Washington and the political sphere. The former national security adviser accuses the House of Representatives of "impeachment malpractice" in his memoir and says Trump engaged in far more objectionable conduct than just what he was impeached for.

In one section of the book, Bolton described how Trump "pleaded" with Xi for China to purchase US agricultural products to help him win reelection in 2020.

"He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.

In an excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal, Bolton added that "Trump's conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump's mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests."

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security," the former national security adviser said. "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."

Bolton said the president's actions related to his China policy "formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency."

"Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump's behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different," the former national security adviser wrote.
Click to expand...

Horrifying if true.
Click to expand...

I know! What are they, Japanese???

Chris · Jun 25, 2020

Marso said: ↑

Bolton's book seems to have been roundly panned by anyone else who was 'in the room.'
Click to expand...

What? That gaggle of liars and thieves? Upset that someone spilled the beans on their graft and treason?

Color me unfucking surprised.

Chris · Jun 25, 2020

Tererun said: ↑

Bolton had his chance to testify before congress and he didn't. I don't need to pay for him to witness when it does not count. Too late old man, the bus left a while ago.
Click to expand...

Did you see his interview on Colbert? He outright blamed Democrats for why he didn't testify.

That's the narrative already shaping in their minds: Trump wasn't one of us and it's Democrats fault that we stood by him.

garamet · Jun 25, 2020

I love when the rats start gnawing on each other while the ship is sinking...

Chris · Jun 25, 2020

garamet said: ↑

I love when the rats start gnawing on each other while the ship is sinking...
Click to expand...

I would prefer if the "ship" weren't sinking at all.

garamet · Jun 25, 2020

Chris said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

I love when the rats start gnawing on each other while the ship is sinking...
Click to expand...

I would prefer if the "ship" weren't sinking at all.
Click to expand...

The "ship" is Der Drumpfenfuhrer and, with luck, the GOP.

Chris · Jun 25, 2020

garamet said: ↑

Chris said: ↑

garamet said: ↑

I love when the rats start gnawing on each other while the ship is sinking...
Click to expand...

I would prefer if the "ship" weren't sinking at all.
Click to expand...

The "ship" is Der Drumpfenfuhrer and, with luck, the GOP.
Click to expand...

We've had to bury 120,000 people. No matter how much I might enjoy his misfortune, it's hard to escape the fact that we're all tethered to his corpse.

Log in or Sign up

Bolton alleges that Trump told China building camps for Muslims was "exactly the right thing to do"

Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

Fisherman's Worf I am the Seaman, I am the Walrus, Qu-Qu-Qapla'!

RickDeckard Socialist

Tuckerfan BMF

oldfella1962 the only real finish line

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

oldfella1962 the only real finish line

We Are Borg Republican Democrat

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Jenee Driver 8

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

Marso High speed, low drag.

Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

steve2^4 Aged Meat

matthunter Ice Bear

spot261 I don't want the game to end

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

Chris Cosmic Horror

Chris Cosmic Horror

garamet "The whole world is watching."

Chris Cosmic Horror

garamet "The whole world is watching."

Chris Cosmic Horror

Log in or Sign up

Bolton alleges that Trump told China building camps for Muslims was "exactly the right thing to do"

Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

Fisherman's Worf I am the Seaman, I am the Walrus, Qu-Qu-Qapla'!

RickDeckard Socialist

Tuckerfan BMF

oldfella1962 the only real finish line

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

oldfella1962 the only real finish line

We Are Borg Republican Democrat

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Jenee Driver 8

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

Marso High speed, low drag.

Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

steve2^4 Aged Meat

matthunter Ice Bear

spot261 I don't want the game to end

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

steve2^4 Aged Meat

Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

TheLonelySquire Fresh Meat

Chris Cosmic Horror

Chris Cosmic Horror

garamet "The whole world is watching."

Chris Cosmic Horror

garamet "The whole world is watching."

Chris Cosmic Horror

Useful Searches