Amb. John Bolton: I Thought Trump Would Be Disciplined

Happy Monday. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. It is March six two thousand twenty three, and in case you missed it, the former president’s spoke this weekend at CPAC with what I think was a clarification and a very clear warning. In twenty sixteen, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your warrior, I am your justice.

And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Well, thanks for making that clear. Look, you know, it is easy to make fun of CPAC, and I’m fully prepared to do that. But there’s also I think this is some of the people need to understand.

There is a real threat there

that is masquerading as a clown car comes circus. But it is real. And I think that what Trump was doing was letting everybody know what Trump two point o would be about. I mean, you look at CPAC and you realize, well, these are crazy these are the extremists. But as I mentioned on morning Joe, on Monday morning, this is

what you would get. With a second Trump administration, and people should have no doubt about that. Look, before we get started this morning. Just a couple of quick notes. I I mentioned this in my newsletter this morning.

And I look, I know these numbers, these ratings bounced around a lot. But over the weekend, this podcast was rated as the number two political podcast on Apple. Actually above Steve Bannon in Kansas. Oh, and so so maybe there is hope after all. But the point is, damn.

And thank you all. I’m I’m really so grateful for all of our guests and loyal listeners into my producer, Katie, and editor, Jason. And look, okay. Maybe we’ll fall out of the top five or the top ten on some days, but I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you. And and while I’m on this topic, It was really so great seeing so many members of the Bulwark community over the weekend in in Washington DC at the principal’s first conference.

It was it was a really good reminder that we’re not the crazy ones and then we’re not alone. So if you already had a member of Bulwark Plus, I hope you’re gonna that are joining us is unlike a lot of other media startups, we have stayed small and lean, and we really depend on the kindness of strangers and and people like you. And if you join us, you’ll have access to our newsletters. My Morning Shot’s newsletter JBL’s triads, and he bunches, Bulwark goes to Hollywood. Joe Perticone’s new newsletter, press pass, and all of our podcasts.

Not just this one, but also the weekly one that I do with Mona Charen called just between us if you haven’t checked that Secret Podcast, begged to differ, the next level podcast, Sarah Longwell Longwell’s excellent must listen to the Focus Secret Podcast, and of course, you’ll have first dibs at all of our upcoming live events. So, really, I hope you think about it becoming a Bulwark plus member today. Today’s podcast is a bit different. I’m gonna catch up with my colleague Will Saletan tomorrow, but today I wanted to share the audio of my conversation with John Bolton. Over the weekend.

The former US ambassador, obviously, and a national security adviser to Donald Trump. Over the weekend, at the principal’s first conference, I had a chance to sit down with Bolton and I had some questions. Look, we did talk Ukraine, Russia, and China, but we also talked about his serial defense of Trump’s relations with Putin, his refusal to voluntarily testify in the impeachment proceedings, and his decision to write a book instead of testifying at that impeachment hearing. Here’s how it went. Well, thank you all for coming.

I don’t think I need to give you a long introduction for our gastah ambassador John Bolton was national security adviser to Donald Trump from April twenty eighteen to September twenty nineteen and United States ambassador of the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, and he also held a rather remarkable list of high level positions in both the Reagan and the George h w Bush administrations. He is the author of the room where it happened, a White House memo arm published in twenty twenty. Ambassador Bolton, good to talk with you. Okay.

So I wanna talk about Ukraine, I wanna talk about Russia, NATO, the seeing aggressiveness of China, America’s role in the world, but I wanna start by doing a little bit of housekeeping. What were you thinking? Going to work for Donald Trump. You are a well known internationalist, interventionist. He ran on the slogan America first.

What were you thinking?

The better question, if I may say, ought to be, what was Trump thinking?

You have a theory?

Yeah, I think he wasn’t paying attention, which was something I learned very early in in the course of being national security adviser. You know, I had been on Fox News for many, many years after leaving the UN job. People said Trump himself said to me, he watched Fox all the time. I don’t think I was hiding my views during those interviews. So I assumed he heard what I was saying and understood it.

And I had several meetings with him had met him before for the election, met him during the election several times after he took office, went through all of the positions I took on all the issues confronting the United States, and he he gave me the offer anyway. So my view was I had heard everything that people had said about Trump. I’m accused for a lot of things. I’m almost never accused of being naive, but I did feel that, like, everyone of his predecessors. The gravity of the decisions that Trump would have to make on national security, the enormous implications of the choices he would make would bring discipline to his approach and that there would be a way that we could have a coherent policy and that it was worth trying to make that effort.

I learned pretty quickly. I was wrong about that, but I just didn’t believe going in that the forty fifth

president was immune to the realities of the rest of the world. But the America first slogan, and I’m I’m reading your biography here. It’s Bolton is widely considered a foreign policy hawk and is an advocate for military action and regime change by the US in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea. And so How did you not think going to work for a guy that was campaigning on America first? How did you not know that that would end badly?

Well, I think those are all overthrowing those regimes and you probably left out a few

— Okay. —

would be very much in America’s interest. Obviously, the term America first given its history is offensive, but let’s also remember John McCain’s Slogan in two thousand eight was country first. So I I assume he’s talking about this country. I don’t know. He had another one in mind.

I I I just thought it was a politician’s bumper sticker approach to the world. And as I say, my conviction going in was that faced with very difficult decisions, potentially committing American troops that Trump would be disciplined?

So, I mean, obviously, by the time that you went to work for him though, it was clear that he had problematic relationship with Russia and with Vladimir Putin. I wanna talk about Russia at at GreatLink. And before you took this position, you had defended a lot of what Donald Trump had done with Vladimir Putin. So for example, the day after he fired FBI director James Comey. He met with the Russian ambassador and Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office.

You went on Fox News and you defended that. You defended the president telling them that Israel had an agent in ISIS. Do you regret that? Well, I don’t think

that’s what I did. I think what I said was the president had the authority to declassify information that he felt it was appropriate to do. I don’t think he should have done it, but the argument was that somehow he had acted improperly. And in that score, It may have been unwise, but it was certainly not improper. And by the way, he should have fired James Comey on January the twentieth twenty seventeen for Comey’s interference in the twenty sixteen.

Oh, actually,

is he still support the firing of James Comey? Well,

if he had done it, on January the twentieth. The democrats would have supported it too because they felt Comey’s two press conferences, which it’s hard to forget, cost chiller of the election, and they probably did.

Okay. So a little bit later in this year before you take office. At the group of twenty meeting in in Hamburg, Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin for two hours without anybody in the room and actually took away the notes from the translator. And there were aids who were, you know, raised concerns about this, who were upset about what is what is going on there. And you went back on Lou Dobbs Show on Fox News and you defended the president and his the way he was behaving with Vladimir Putin in retrospect back.

Were you wrong?

No. All presidents have one on ones with their counterparts. All of them. And it’s a good thing to do.

But you suggested at the time the aids who were concerned should be fired. You called for them to be fired.

That’s right. For saying, basically, he shouldn’t have met one on one.

What should they have done?

I think they were wrong in believing he shouldn’t read one on one. And the fact he took the translator’s notes away, he shouldn’t tell you anything in Helsinki. He also met with Putin one on one. And there were two translators in the room, one of which was the American translator. And so for those who say, my god, what did he give away?

We talked to the translator after it was over. And he didn’t give anything away. Yeah.

Another

point is that the president can’t do anything without having aids do it. So if he had made some commitment to Putin, we would have found out about it. Whether he’s a good president or a bad president and I I wrote a five hundred page book on what my opinion of the presidency is.

We’ll talk about that.

The notion the notion that president can’t meet one on one with a foreign leader particularly an adversary. As Regan met with Gorbachev, this goes back a long way. There’s nothing surprising about

Alright. So these aids who were concerned about it, you you said they should be fired. Should they have resigned instead mean, what what should they if if you see the president doing something that is dangerous, which you would count in your book what is the responsibility of the person in the administration or the aid? When you see the president, we’ll talk about your Bulwark you talk about him, you know, trying to do get the Chinese president to help him win reelection or taking actions to do favors for dictators, including obstruction of justice. What you’ve talked about in in your book.

What is the responsibility? Should should the aides not speak out? Or should they resign and then speak out? What is the obligation?

Well, I think it depends on the circumstances that you’re in and the nature of the issue. I lasted seventeen months. And I was criticized by some people who, of course, said you never should have taken the job and that you should have resigned on day one or day four day eight or day twenty seven or day eighty four

or after Helsinki.

That’s one one series of criticisms. The other criticism was Why did you resign at all? Why didn’t you stay in and continue to struggle? I made my decision. We can talk about it further if if you’d like.

Other people made their decision. There was gonna be a national security adviser. I happen to have a pretty high opinion of my abilities. You can agree or disagree with that too, but I figured as long as I could get things done, I ought to try and stick it out. And whether I stayed too long or did it stay long enough, people can have their opinions on.

But I think the idea that when somebody sees something they disagree with and think is potentially wrong, they ought to go out and proclaim what’s happened to the media. As if that will have some effect, I think, is is naive. I think it’s virtue signaling. It makes people feel good for a minute and then it disappears.

Well, but you’re at a five hundred page book telling about this.

That’s right. No. That’s that’s exactly right. I I did it, as Frank Senatore would say, I did it my way. Okay.

So in this book and we can, you

know, go through the details. I mean, it is stunning stuff. And the yeah.

I’d be happy to read passages of it for general edifice.

It’s an audible book. Right? I mean okay. So, you know, asking China for help or his reelection campaign that they would buy more products from American farmers. You wanted to use the full words the president used, but they would would not give you permission for this.

Is it

right? In the pre publication review. He said that it was a good idea to have

these internment camps in China he was offering favors to dictators, including, you know, took a strong man. He did not know the United Kingdom was a nuclear power. He did not know that Finland was not part of of Russia. And of course, you also write about what you colorfully called the drug deal that was going down in Ukraine. You wrote about all of this, you put it in your book, but you wouldn’t testify voluntarily to the house when the impeachment of Donald Trump was up.

Why not?

I felt that the impeachment effort was very ill advised. I thought it was inherently political by the democrats doing in a way exactly what they accuse Trump of doing. Of using the powers of government for partisan political which is what he was doing in Ukraine. These

are not the same thing at all.

I I think it is. Let me let me explain.

Okay. No. My way. The constituting impeachment is in the constitution. It is part of our structure calling up and trying to shake down a foreign leader for political dirt is not the same thing.

I I think it is. I think it

what

What what they did was knowingly to try and focus the effort in a very narrow way among other things to avoid interfering with the schedule for the Democratic presidential nomination, which was gonna take place in twenty twenty. They did it knowing, knowing, that they couldn’t get two thirds in the senate. And I called that impeachment malpractice because of the effect it had on Trump. Nancy Pelosi loves to say Trump will always be impeached. What she o miss to say is Trump will always be acquitted.

And the maneuver to impeach him and have him acquitted in the Senate empowered Trump. It had exactly the opposite effect what the advocates of impeachment said. When

you said it was impeachment, malpractice, and I think you’ve you’ve explained it. But were you also suggesting that they should have looked at a lot of other things

that have formed? That would have interfered. Here’s my point. That would have interfered with the Democratic nomination process in twenty twenty. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, others wanted to get out on the campaign trail.

And I was told by Republican senators who had heard from the Democratic leadership in the House. They wanted to get it over with quick and that’s what it was all about. Well, if this is such a serious matter, get it over quickly, to avoid interfering with their nomination process, that shows the fundamentally political nature. So what

should they have done? Should they when you say they broaden it out, should they have looked at the obstruction of justice with Erdogan?

Sure. Look at the — depends on whether you’re serious about achieving an outcome by launching an impeachment process or whether your virtue is signaling. Look at us, look how righteous we are when the Watergate hearings started. Nobody really knew where they were gonna go, but they took their time to Sam Urban and and the democrats went out of their way to try and bring Republicans in. And ultimately, although Nixon was not convicted he was forced to resign, nothing of that happened here.

And I think that’s irresponsible from a constitutional perspective. It is ironic though that you would suggest that they should have broadened

it to include some of the stuff that you have in your book, but we’re not willing to testify to. So you’re criticizing them for not going deeper, but but when you had the opportunity and I talked to

the attorney general

to go back.

That’s right. And I went to the attorney general. I put that in the book too. And I told Bill Barr about some of these things with Erdogan and some of the others. That’s his job.

It’s not my job.

Okay. So you told Bill Barr, the

attorney general is the United States. You know, I understand what that reaction is. What else are you going to do? You want to rewrite the whole constitution to suit your particular version of this here, there’s a process and there are rules. Trump didn’t follow them and and the answer is sort of like a man for all seasons.

To get Trump will sweep everything else away. You gotta be very careful.

Okay. I wanna talk about it. I I wanna talk about Afghanistan’s story. In a moment, because I I also wanna talk

about can we talk about Trump some more?

We well, if you insist. Because I I don’t wanna give you a chance to address this crisis. Which was that you knew all of this stuff. You had all of this stuff. And instead of sharing it with the Congress of the United States, you wrote a book and you sold a book.

And therefore, you put that ahead of the obligation. Now, do you know the criticism? I wanna give you a chance to answer that.

Look, the idea that I was trying to make money off of the experience is is fundamentally irrelevant. When you resign.

That’s not insane. Nile, by the way. It’s

Well, I’m happy to make money. If if if none of you here in this room are happy to make money, speak up. When you resign and go on television for two or three or four days, it causes a flash and then it disappears. You have to answer questions from reporters. Do you think it’s possible to lay out the complete story?

Of course not. So what I did was write a five hundred page book that laid it all out in ways that I thought were clear. And I hope it had an effect on the twenty twenty election. I don’t know whether it did or not, but it was much more effective to go that way than to rush into the spotlight for a few

moments. So let’s talk about Afghanistan because you’re of course very involved from the get go in Iraq and Afghanistan. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a fiasco. Who is responsible for that. The Trump administration negotiated the pullout.

The Biden administration was charged with handling it. How do you apportion responsibility for what happened there?

Well, well, they’re both responsible. It’s not simply that the withdrawal itself was a fiasco. The strategic impact withdrawing from Afghanistan is the catastrophe. And I attribute that I attribute that to Trump. It was Trump who negotiated with the Taliban to the exclusion of the legitimate Afghan government that we had set up.

And that that fundamentally said to both the Taliban and to the people of Afghanistan Trump wants out, and it doesn’t matter what the conditions are. And it was it was clear that the whole negotiation process was undermining the government of Afghanistan. Now, there’s no doubt in my mind, notwithstanding that the people who negotiated the deal from our perspective, Mike Pompeo and Haileza, I’d say, but there were Ron DeSantis. Conditions that the Africans had to meet Ron DeSantis that Taliban had to meet trust a withdrawal. That was the way the Pentagon justified their support for the deal.

But it was perfectly clear to me that Trump didn’t care about the conditions he wanted out and he was gonna get out if he had gotten a second term. Biden did not have to accept the deal they completely misunderstood the undermining of the Afghan government that the negotiation of the deal had caused And Biden, in many respects, was the same as Trump. He wanted out and he didn’t care what it took. Do you think that what happened in Afghanistan or how much what happened

in Afghanistan contribute to what happened later in Ukraine. Did Vladimir Putin look at that? Was that one of the factors that he took into consideration saying, I think the west is weak. I think this government is weak.

Yeah, there’s no question about it. And there were other factors as well. He met with Biden in Vienna in the summer of twenty twenty one. I can only imagine what this cold blooded KGB operative thought of Joe Biden sitting opposite Trump. I had a very clear idea of what he thought about Donald Trump.

For different reasons. He I think he despised both of them. And he felt that from the experience of the lack of an effective Western response in twenty fourteen after the first incursion into Ukraine that neither Biden nor the west as a whole would respond. You

said something very interesting there. You think that Blair Putin despised Donald Trump. Talk to me about that. Well

I I think he thought he was a

fool. So one of the lines we hear from Mago World is that Vladimir Putin never would’ve invaded Ukraine when Trump was president, but he waited till Trump was out and then invaded when Joe Biden was president. What do you think?

Of course, that’s not true. Look, from the time of the flap over the Ukraine security assistance, we were really in an election campaign at that point. And I think that Putin would not have contemplated invading during an election campaign because he could not predict what the impact on the election would be he was waiting for Trump to get reelected because he believed as I believed that Trump would have withdrawn from NATO do you believe that he would have

actually gone ahead and was

wrong from me? Yes. I do. And and by the way, just to defend my book one more time, how long on the evening news interview I would have had, would we have talked about the impact of what’s wrong from NATO? Yeah.

You know, that wouldn’t have come up. Anyway, The point for Putin would be if Trump is basically doing his work for him, it makes the ultimate invasion that much easier. When Trump lost, I think that had to cause some reflection on Putin’s part, but then almost immediately thereafter, Biden agreed to a five year extension of the new start treaty and got nothing in return for it. A treaty that in twenty ten when it was negotiated was disproportionately favor to Russia at the time, then followed the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then followed the meeting in Vienna. So by late twenty twenty one, the buildup is already underway on the on the Ukraine border.

So this seems like a huge issue that is gonna overshadow twenty twenty four. If a president Donald Trump two point o would pull us out of NATO, what would it mean? For the world, for the Western Alliance, for free countries. If the United States basically said after this incredible success of of NATO and Western unity. What what would happen?

Well,

it would be catastrophic around the world. People talk about what minimal order there is in the world and without really understanding that the reason there’s almost any order in the world at all is because of the United States and its strength projected internationally along with its allies. If we abandoned the most successful political military alliance in history, it would be a a diminution of our ability to affect the rest of the world that you can’t really calculate. And it wouldn’t simply be damaging in the North Atlantic. It would be damaging around the world because we haven’t talked we haven’t talked about China, but China looked at the draw from Afghanistan, I think much the same way Russia did.

And a withdrawal from the NATO alliance would would be free past to the Chinese almost everywhere.

So how surprised should we be? How surprised were you by NATO stepping up? The western alliance being so strong. I’m guessing that Vladimir Putin thought that not only was the United States weak, who would not step up, but that the West, would not do this. I mean, I’m guessing that Vladimir Putin did not think that his invasion of Ukraine would result in NATO admitting Sweden and Finland as well or that Poland would take the position it is.

Your thoughts? Well,

I think there were a lot of miscalculations Putin on Putin certainly got completely wrong what the abilities of the Russian military were. Although, let’s be clear, so did American intelligence? We briefed Congress that Kiev would fall in a matter of days and the country would fall in a matter of weeks. Remember, we were trying to get Zelensky out of the country. And have stayed behind Gorilla Warfare planned after the defeat.

So, Kooten was wrong about his own army, but but sober way. And while NATO has responded respectively, this is far from over yet. And the weaknesses in NATO that that remain in their evident. I think Putin is going to try to exploit over the next year because I think this unfortunately is going to go on for a long time because of the inability to Biden administration to to have a strategy for victory. What they’re doing is providing enough aid so that Ukraine doesn’t fall.

Which is fine. You know, this war can go on for a long time. No Americans are dying. We’re getting great battlefield testing of our weapons. We’re as secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin said, six or seven months ago, the Russians are feeding their army into a wood chipper.

This is all fine. Of course, we’re all also destroying significant parts of Ukraine. And it’s it’s not enough simply to stop the Russians. It’s the official position of the United States in every NATO ally that Ukraine should be restored to its full territorial integrity and sovereignty. And if we believe that, then what’s the strategy to achieve that Biden doesn’t have one and honestly neither just NATO.

So what should we have done and when should we have done it do you think?

Well, a large part of the problem stemmed from Trump’s efforts to unleash Rudy Giuliani into Ukraine because from that point on for the rest of Trump’s term, there was no effective relationship between him and Zelensky, and there was while the provision of some assistance continued, it was not in any way connected with any kind of strategic appreciation of what the threat might be. So that was a year and a half lost. Just simply lost to Ukraine. When Biden came in, I don’t think they paid much attention to it either. But by the time you get to late twenty twenty one, when they begin to worry and they’re obviously as they later disclosed getting intelligence that the Russians may be thinking of an invasion, there were multiple things we could have done to deter the Russians, which we didn’t do.

In fact, on two occasions, Biden said, I don’t think deterrence works here. We can punish them after the fact, but we can’t deter them. Well, again, if if you’re Vladimir Putin, that says they’re not going to do anything. What we should have done first beginning in late twenty twenty one or certainly before February the twenty fourth, we shouldn’t have imposed massive sanctions on Russia. People said, well, if you sanction them before the invasion, maybe they all invade earlier.

Well, how did that work out? They invaded in February. The sanctions would have been the missed sanctions we didn’t impose in twenty fourteen and others to show that this is going to be extremely costly. There were other things we could have done as well. But even there, the NATO alliance performance was not that great on imposing the sanctions.

You heard the Europeans. You heard the the breadths. You heard us really say, we’re gonna cut off purchases of Russian oil. In every case, The effective date was six months after the enactment of the sanctions. Six months, six months for the Russians to hedge and and make other arrangements.

Because it would be inconvenient for Europe and Germany in particular to put the sanctions down immediately. That’s not effective on NATO’s part.

We’ve used the phrase self deterrents several times described by the administrations approach to this. How concerned should the administration and NATO B about some of the saber rattling involving nukes. Would Vladimir Putin ever use nukes? And what would the response be? What would the consequence of that be?

Well, it’s possible, but I think the deterrence was not self deterrence even on the conventional side. This long series of arguments that we’ve had about do we supply Polish migs, do we supply more javelins, high Mars, tanks, f sixteen’s today. It shows that the Russians have intimidated us because of the fear of a wider conventional war in Europe. Now, one question that the administration should be asking is why did conventional war with Russian army? Where is this army that he’s hiding?

It’s so much better that it’s gonna escalate against us. And if he’s got a better army, why isn’t it in Ukraine now? Now on the nuclear side, I think that the potential threat comes only in circumstances where Russian forces and Ukraine have totally collapsed or fleeing back toward the Russian border and where there’s been significant deterioration in Putin’s own political position in Russia. I think it gets to be a more serious iteration then, obviously, we’re not at that point. And every time he has rattled the nuclear saber, we’ve had testimony by heads of our intelligence agencies in public session that they detected no changes in the deployment of any of the rush nuclear forces, which means that it was all totally a bluff.

So I wanna move on to China and the way that American attitudes towards China are changing right now. But you and I were talking about this in the green room before the show. You went on Eric Bowling Show on News Mac sometime back. And you said something that I thought was gonna make his head explode. You said that right now, the country is safer under Joe Biden than Donald Trump.

And people ought to look up this YouTube video because Eric Bowling was very, very upset about it. But it was surprising coming from you. Do you believe that today, we are safer than we were under Donald Trump and why?

Well, I think we’re safer because we’ve got somebody at least in administration that does have an appreciation for strategic thinking. The trouble with Trump was that he didn’t have an attention span long enough to focus on trying to move from a to b to c compared to a net. Yeah. That may have been complementary to the

net.

Trump’s Trump’s total focus was on what was good for Donald Trump. And For example, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal imposing sanctions on Iran, all things that I favored, I wanted to go further, as you mentioned earlier, I wanted regime change in Iran. But Trump, at the Eirid’s g seven meeting in August of twenty nineteen, came very close to meeting with the Iranian foreign minister. Job at Zarif at the time that president Macron or France had brought the B. Ritz to put him in a room with Trump.

And Trump came very close to meeting with Zarif. Because he thought he could make a deal. And he would have been happy to reverse withdrawal from the twenty fifteen nuclear deal if he could have made a deal, like he thought he could make a deal with Kim Jong un. There’s just no thinking about that at all. Biden makes mistakes.

And as I said, I think his performance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is barely satisfactory, but that’s better than withdrawing from NATO.

So let’s talk about China. After you left the administration, you wrote a scathing piece in the Wall Street Journal about the Trump administration’s failed China policy. Let’s talk about this. Because it does feel as if we’re in a bipartisan moment where everybody is wants to crack down on China, what did Trump administration, Donald Trump get wrong about China? Well, Trump’s focus as on many, many other

international issues was trade. And he felt if he could make the biggest trade deal in history with China that that would solve all of the problems. Now, there were some people in the administration who knew what what our objectives were, but they were never gonna be accepted by China, and Trump didn’t understand them enough to push them, like what to do to stop thirty plus years of China stealing our intellectual property. About discrimination against foreign investors and traders about manipulating the international trading system and a range of other things. What Trump wanted in exchange for China making those kinds of commitments was to buy more agricultural products.

That was the biggest trade deal in history. And he didn’t think about what other threats China posed. This is not because he had a sense of what China’s threat was, he just felt that being tough on China would be politically beneficial

to Donald Trump. And and I think it was politically beneficial to him. There’s a longer story going back to the early 2000s where there was this optimistic belief that if we traded more with China, they would become more open. If we engaged with them, I think we’ve been disillusioned about this. Where do you come down on the question of is it time to decouple from China?

Is that even possible? Is that realistic? What should our posture be?

I don’t believe in industrial policy sort of generaling. I think there should be a lot more careful examination of industries and products that have a national security factor in them. But I think right now, American business is doing its own decoups in a very rational way that every time a company has to look at potential new capital allocation for investment in China, they’re thinking of something else. They’re trying to hedge their supply chains. I think this is going to happen anyway.

In part, this is finally the end of of the mythology of globalization that political risk has disappeared from the world and having a plant in China is no different than having a plant in It’s just not true.

Do you think China is going to invade Taiwan?

Well, I think the risk is high. Although I don’t think they actually want to invade because they don’t want to take over a heap of smoking rubble. They want Taiwan to fall into their lap like a piece of ripe fruit. And so I think the way it would happen would be not an invasion, but the creation of some kind of political pretext to throw a blockade around Taiwan and then see if the United States came to Taiwan’s side. Because if we didn’t, that would absolutely demolish our position in East Asia Taiwan at that point would fall under Chinese Germany and it would only be a matter of time before they took it over.

But if we

do, come to Taiwan’s defensive capabilities.

What we should do right now is increase Taiwan’s defensive capabilities. By that, I mean, among other things, home porting a couple of American naval vessels in Gao Sheng, I would put a lot more American military forces into Taiwan to train and assist the Taiwanese. So

this would all be deterrence.

Yeah. And that would be the same thing. It was another thing we could have done before the Ukraine invasion more Americans in, not to fight, but so the Russian generals figuratively looking across the border through their binoculars would say, I wonder what all those American flags mean. I think China can be deterred here. But I think the long term answer is that we’ve got to take the step.

I first recommended in two thousand and grant full diplomatic recognition to the government of Taiwan. The Chinese won’t like it. That’d be very provocative. Yeah. And and begin to integrate Taiwan into the kinds of collective defense structures that we need along the Indo Pacific periphery.

Japan, South Korea, Australia, others. There’s a lot of work we can do and Taiwan could be a very important part of I

wanna talk about next year now. You have become a never again trumper. Yeah. Fair to say that that you are determined that he will never get back into the Oval Office with his finger on the button?

Yeah. I I think that’s very important. I should say

just to see

what the reaction in this crowd is in In twenty twenty, I didn’t vote for Biden either. I wrote in the name of a real conservative Republican because there weren’t any on the ballot.

Who’d you read in? I’m

not gonna say it. Okay. So what? It was it was not me.

So well, it wasn’t you then, but are you thinking are you thinking of running for present in twenty twenty four. And what is what is the rationale? What is the base there?

Yeah. Well, I am thinking about it. I hadn’t originally intended to. I did look very seriously at it in twenty sixteen. I went to the cattle shows in Iowa in New Hampshire.

I took my wife and daughter up to New Hampshire to see how they like campaigning. I mean, I did I did a lot of due diligence and and ultimately decided not to run and I had not intended to do so this time up until Trump said that we should terminate the const institution so that he could be declared the winner of the twenty twenty election. Now, like a lot of people in this room, I’ve I’ve filled out a lot of security forms over the years And there’s always a question on it and says something like, have you ever advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States? And I’ve always said no. But but that’s what Trump was advocating.

And I that didn’t disappoint me or

so. Right. He did try to overturn the government earlier. Remember

No. No. Look, January the sixth, you give the man far too much credit. He had no idea what was actually gonna happen then. Other people may have had ideas he’s not capable of thinking it through.

He’s not. But what I was really disciplined, I don’t know why why you think he’s he’s such a phenomenal presence. This is a very limited man. He’s He’s he’s done enormous damage. He’s he’s done enormous damage, but but it’s not because of his mental acuity.

That’s for sure. I’m

I’m gonna let the whole January sixth thing go because we did go down that rabbit hole. But you raised the interesting question though. If he is so limited, why have Republicans not figured out how to take him on? We’re sitting here right now, and he’s still we’re head in the polls. A lot of the other Republicans, their grand strategy seems to be Humana Humana Humana, Unicorn, maybe he’ll die.

How do you run against Donald Trump? Can you go around it or do you have to go through him ambassador? Yeah.

Look, I think he’s a lot weaker than people think I’ve done polling through my pack and the last one I did was in late August of last year. I consistently found a lot less support for him among self identified Republicans than a lot of other polls, and I think it’s continuing to decline. I think people are intimidated by them because they’re afraid of being attacked. And I think the real answer is that rather than doing what happened in twenty sixteen is the candidates other than Trump tried to take each other out so they could then face Trump alone is you do have to go with Trump directly. In the course of this consideration.

I’ve I’ve been asked by a lot of people, well, what would you do if you got on a debate stage with Trump? And I I mean, the answer is I’d have a hell of a good time. Because if you’re prepared to take him on, he doesn’t know how to respond

to you. Take him on. He’s gonna say, you just wanna bomb everybody and you’re warmonger.

Yeah. Right?

Okay. That’s his line about. So your, you know, it’s your turn ambassador Bolton. What do you say?

I I think I would explain how incompetent he was at doing all the things that

happened during the administration. You would say this. You have to. Okay. It’s true.

Because Mike Pompeo, Secret Podcast state, seems incapable of naming him and Nick he really can’t say a single issue she disagrees with him on.

Well, you know, I’ve had my differences with Pompeo. If you’ve read his book, you probably have become aware of that. I know who I would support if I didn’t run under some circumstances, but that’s one reason to support? Well, I’m not gonna say — Okay. — I don’t

wanna damage the ass.

I don’t wanna damage their chances.

Okay.

But I think if I could see a path to when, and I would not do this just to be a pain in the ass, I would do it because I thought I could get the nomination. The person who stands up and tells the truth ultimately should prevail. And if that’s not true in American politics, then you need another

no one’s ever accused you of being naive before. But

over over time over time if you don’t trust the people, leave. Leave. You can be skeptical to people all you want, but it’s the responsibility of a political leader to change people’s minds, to bring them, to the position he thinks they ought to take. And if you spend all your time denigrating the American people, you’re gonna be in a room this size for the rest of eternity. So I think,

Abi Abi obviously, one of the reasons why other Republicans are reluctant to take it to Donald Trump or to go go to him is number one, they’re afraid to unleash the the Trump, you know, insult machine on them, which will be unleashed anyway. But secondly, they’re afraid that the base will be the offended and that they will be excommunicated. So aren’t you concerned that there would be just a tremendous backlash against? I mean, this is the calculation that every Republican on that stage gonna make when they have to debate Donald Trump. So what are your thoughts about that?

You have a cult of personality out there. How are they gonna react? Well,

I I think the cult of personality is overrated. I think a lot of the polls that show support for Trump in head on head races with Biden. Are the tribal knee jerk reaction. But I think especially after November the eighth, I think more and more people see that the path to winning in twenty twenty four, not just the White House, but the House and the Senate has got to be with somebody other than Trump at the top of the ticket.

So what happens if Donald Trump is the nominee in twenty twenty four?

I think he loses. I think we lose seats in the Senate in a year where we should gain four, five, or six. I think we lose control of the House of Representatives, and I think the party itself could be in real trouble at that point.

What if he wins? What would a Trump restoration look like? What would it mean for the kinds of things that we’ve been talking about?

Well, I think it would have significant damaged for the country. The the damage that Trump did in the first term was all repairable. All repairable. The damage he would do in the second term is likely not gonna be repairable. Give

me an example of that. What would be an an irreparable bit of damage? Well,

I think the undercutting of the judicial system and the the prosecutorial system reflected in his effort to cancel the results of twenty twenty election, which were amateurish and came nowhere close to success. This time would have people working on it that would be

much more difficult to prevent. So looking back, a lot of people in this room have a lot of regrets, about a lot of things. So do you regret the role you played in defending Donald Trump, enabling Donald Trump? Giving him the cover, going into his administration. In retrospect, do you think that we wish that your wife had pulled you aside and said She she did.

John, What are you thinking? I’m

an easiest PF guy. You know,

you’re

gonna regret Rehan. You know? Somebody’s gonna be national security adviser. You want it to be Steve Ben, cash Patel because that’s what’s coming in the second term. And You know, I

I I do think he’s joking that, you know? No. No.

I don’t think I don’t think he’s

been in the Secret Podcast to see if you’ll laugh at them then.

No. I I I don’t regret it at all. I knew what I was getting into, as I say, I was wrong, and that I thought that even Donald Trump would have to be dis disciplined by the gravity of of the national security issues he had to face. But when I saw he wasn’t disciplined, it just reinforced in my mind that somebody who knew what was going on, had to try and do the best they could.

Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate

it. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you all for listening todays Bulwark Secret Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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