Donald Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has made a series of bombshell revelations in a new tell-all biography. Claims that the White House does not want aired in public, with Trump’s administration launching a legal bid to block the book’s publication. However the volume, which is supposed to be released next week, has been leaked in its entirety to the New York Times and the Washington Post. American newspapers have been plastered full of the most outlandish claims about the embattled President, so Mr S has compiled the five most explosive claims from the disgruntled former staffer:
1. Trump asked China for help with the 2020 election
In a lengthy piece for the WSJ, Bolton explains how Trump asked Xi Jinping to use his country’s economic heft to help sway American voters. Bolton writes:
Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.
2. Trump didn’t know the UK was a nuclear power
In what must have been an awkward exchange, Trump expressed surprise during a 2018 meeting with Theresa May when a British official mentioned that the UK was a nuclear power. ‘Oh, are you a nuclear power?’ replied the ‘stunningly uninformed’ President. The interjection ‘was not intended as a joke’ explains Bolton. Ouch.
3. Trump wants to abolish the constitutional two-term limit
Bolton revealed Trump’s disregard for the constitutional restraints put in place to limit the power of the president. In another extraordinary section of the same WSJ piece, he tells how Trump and Xi agreed that the US has ‘too many elections’:
One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him. Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.
4. Trump thought Finland was part of Russia
In a blunder that is likely to offend an entire nation, Trump apparently thought Finland was part of Russia. Bear in mind that much of the Scandinavian country’s history has been one of dealing with Russian interference. But this apparently wasn’t the only time the President’s international understanding appeared limited. In a comment that is bound to enflame South American dictator Nicolas Maduro, Trump said it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela and suggested that the country was ‘really part of the United States’ anyway. A claim that some might call Caracas…
5. Trump used a Saudi killing to distract attention
Bolton makes clear that Trump was obsessed with his 2020 presidential election chances. He writes, ‘I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations’. So obsessed, it seems, that he was willing to equivocate on a Saudi assassination to draw attention away from his daughter. In November 2018, shortly after the killing of Saudi journalism Jamal Khashoggi, Trump released a bizarre statement saying, ‘The world is a very dangerous place!’ while suggesting Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman may not have been involved: ‘maybe he did and maybe he didn’t’.
According to Bolton, this was a deliberate ploy to distract from another story about Trump’s daughter Ivanka who had been caught up in story about using personal emails for official business. Trump allegedly said ‘This will divert from Ivanka… If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.’
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