Bolton is a peculiar and stubborn man – you can tell that from his moustache. He’s also a greedy hack. Earlier this year, when all his old neocon NeverTrump allies were begging for him to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, he decided to stay quiet. He wanted to keep his powder dry for his tell-all book, no doubt in some small part because he was offered a $2 million (£1.6m) advance from publishers Simon & Schuster. If he cared even half as much as he claims to about America’s national interest, maybe he’d have acted differently.
Bolton’s new book is certainly newsworthy. The bombshells go bang. Trump’s extraordinary and fawning overtures to Chinese president Xi Jinping are, if true, particularly embarrassing for the president ahead of an election that will involve two candidates seeking to portray the other as weak on China. The revelation that Trump thought it was ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela is juicy, as is the claim that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Bolton that Trump was ‘full of shit’, especially since Pompeo and Bolton are old friends.
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