‘Trump is not fit to be president, Putin knows flattery works with him’: John Bolton’s exclusive interview to Firstpost

John Bolton, who served as the National Security Advisor (NSA) and the Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) under Donald Trump’s administration, joined Firstpost for an exclusive interview ahead of the US presidential election.

Bolton’s most recent book, ‘The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir’, is a best-selling tell-all memoir of his tenure in the Trump administration. Edited excerpts:

Alyson: The year 2024 is definitely a year of elections. Over half the world’s population is going to the polls this year. Of course, the United States, the oldest democracy, is going to vote in November — two candidates who couldn’t be more different. Kamala Harris has officially accepted the nomination for the Democrats and Donald Trump for the Republicans. What are your thoughts on the two candidates?

Bolton: Well, it’s a very close race at the moment and I think a lot of Americans are still dissatisfied with the choice they’re facing, although President Biden has given up his hopes for re-election and has been replaced by his vice president. There’s still a lot of feeling that these are choices people wish they didn’t have to face. But I think we’re in uncharted territory. We’ve never seen in contemporary times a presidential candidate, particularly an incumbent president, step out this late.

The next big event that could be dispositive in the election is the debate on September 10th between Trump and Harris. A lot of people will be watching. They don’t really know what Harris’ views are on many subjects and many others will be watching to see if Trump can discipline himself and talk about policy rather than personality. But it’s also important to remember that the control of the Senate and the House of Representatives are both up for grabs too and a lot of people are hoping for a split outcome that maybe one party wins the White House, but the other party gets the House and the Senate to balance things out.

Alyson: Absolutely. And Ambassador, the world is facing turbulent times.

We have the war between Russia and Ukraine still raging. There is war between Israel and Gaza. What potential impact will the US presidential election have in terms of US foreign policy? We saw Biden during his tenure providing huge support for Ukraine and Trump, of course, has a very different approach to providing support to Ukraine as an example.

Bolton: Yes, I think the outcome could be quite significant.

Just to start with Harris, we really don’t know much about her national security policy. She didn’t [prioritise it] when she was in the Senate. It was not a major priority of hers. She has obviously been vice president for three and a half years. She sat in a lot of National Security Council meetings. My guess would be for, let’s say, the first year of a Harris term, her policy would look a lot like Biden’s because that’s what she’s comfortable with. That’s what she’s lived with. But she will pick her own cabinet.

I think basically the faces people see now in the Biden administration will pretty much all change. So it depends in significant respect who her new advisers are and it depends on what the circumstances are in the wider world.

Trump, although he doesn’t have a philosophy and the conventional meaning of that term, tends toward an isolationist approach. I’m very worried. For example, he might decide to pull the United States out of NATO. The future of our aid to Ukraine, I think, is very much in doubt. It’s not clear what his position would be exactly in the Middle East.

In the first term, he was very pro-Israel. There’s no guarantee that will continue. And in Asia, how he reacts to China is also still up in the air.

So a lot of unanswered questions. And I’m very afraid that the debate in the US over the next two months will not really focus on foreign policy so much. It will be more on domestic issues. So there’s a lot at stake, but not a lot of debate about it.

Alyson: And in your new memoir, in the introduction, in January, you wrote that Trump was unfit to be president. You said, and if you will, I’ll quote, if his first four years were bad, the second four will be worse. What are your assumptions of what a second Trump presidency will look like?

Bolton: Well, I think it’s important for folks to understand that under the Constitution, if he wins in November, he cannot run for a third term. So that means that he’s a lame duck from the very beginning. It’s his second term in office, but it also means the political dynamic that affected him in the first term doesn’t apply in a second term. He knew during his first term  that he had to face the voters again in 2020. That often led to him to make incorrect decisions on political grounds, not on strategic grounds in foreign policy matters. But he doesn’t have that guardrail in his second term if he wins.

He didn’t know much about international relations before he took office. He didn’t learn much while he was in office. And he hasn’t learned anything since then.

I think that hard authoritarian leaders around the world like Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and others think that he’s somebody that they can get the objectives that they’re seeking. They know that flattery works with him. And so I’m worried about America’s position in the world in a second Trump term.

Alyson: And you have mentioned before that Trump offered personal favours to dictators, and it’s a relationship that he has boasted about multiple times, even on the election trail. Why do you think that is?

Bolton: Well, this is something that many people find hard to grasp, but I don’t think Trump understands the difference between his personal interest and the national interest.

He has said many times he thinks if he has good relations with a foreign head of state like Vladimir Putin, then that means the United States and Russia have good relations. That’s not true. It means if he does a personal favour for President Erdogan of Turkey, for example, that that will ultimately benefit the United States or benefit him.

And that’s not necessarily the case either. So I think Trump is just over his head and in many of these international issues and his approach is ad hoc, transactional, and seen very much through the prism of how does this benefit Donald Trump?

Alyson: The last election was one of the most divisive in America’s recent history. What is the feeling like in the run up to these elections?

Bolton: Well, I think there’s a great concern that in another close election, which I think there’s every reason to believe this will be, that Trump will, if he loses, again say that he didn’t lose, that the election was stolen and that we could face again the turmoil we faced after the 2020 election.

Now, I think it’s different this time because Trump’s not sitting in the Oval Office. He’s sitting by the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago. So his efforts will be, I think, much more difficult. But this idea that he’s already making excuses why he’s losing, he’s saying many illegal aliens have been registered to vote and that the Democrats will steal the election in major urban areas is preconditioning people to believe that the election is being stolen.

Like any country, there’s corruption in American elections. The question is that does it rise to a really significant level such that the outcome of the election is affected? I don’t think that was anywhere close to being true in 2020. I don’t think it’ll be true in 2024, but in a very divided country, which we are now, this partisan view that the other side is trying to steal the election is very pernicious.

Alyson: And what potential impact will the presidential election have on US national security and national defence?

Bolton: Well, I think we are in a world that’s increasingly threatening. As you mentioned, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, the threat of China along its long Indo-Pacific periphery, Taiwan, the South China Sea, the land borders with Vietnam and India and others, a possible conflict in Latin America, possible conflict in Africa, instability in sub-Saharan Africa, for example.

All of this means that the US and its allies, friends around the world, have to be more prepared to face a wide variety of threats. And although our defence budget is over 3 per cent of GDP, still many of our NATO allies are less than 2 per cent. And probably we’re going to have to raise our budget. Politicians don’t like to talk about that. But I think that’s the reality we face in a more dangerous world. And I wish that we’d have more debate about that in the next two months. I doubt that we will, unfortunately.

Alyson: Take a look at the latest polls. The Democratic National Convention came to a close, and we do seem to see a renewed and invigorated Democratic Party with Kamala Harris leading in the polls, as you mentioned. But these polls are not, of course, an exact science. What are your takeaways from the current position with the polls?

Bolton: Well, you know, polling in the United States over the past two presidential elections has not been terribly successful. And people are doubtful that they’re really capturing the sentiment of those who turn out and actually vote. So it’s very difficult, except I do think that if you look at all the polls together, that they’re still within the margin of error showing a very close race.

And I think the instinctive sense of real experts on this is that’s right. But when an election is decided by a few thousand votes in a few swing states in the Electoral College, being roughly correct doesn’t really tell you very much. So I think the next two months of campaigning, the debate on September 10th, as I mentioned, I think, could be very important.

And there’s really no time to correct mistakes. This will be a very short campaign by American standards with Biden having dropped out. So the stakes are very high and time is very short.

Alyson: We saw a landmark deal last time Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington. India and the US signed an agreement to share jet engine technology. What do you think is the next big thing in India? US cooperation in terms of defense, critical technologies, space, clean energy, and even into cultural ties?

Bolton: Well, I think the field is wide open for cooperation in all those areas and it should be a priority for the next American president, whoever it is, to meet with Prime Minister Modi and to carry this forward.

I think India is at a potential turning point. I think closer cooperation with the Quad with Japan, Australia, the US and others really is the most productive way ahead. And I think it behoves the US to pay more attention to India and to try and find more ways across a broader range of subjects to work together.

Alyson: Domestically, what role do you think the economic factors are going to be playing in voters’ minds in terms of their making decisions and have you seen any specific demographics showing significant voting patterns between these two candidates?

Bolton: Well, I think for most Americans, the two biggest issues that play to Trump’s advantage are the economy, the persistence of inflation that bothers almost everybody, and the illegal immigration question which allows thousands of people to come into the country and perhaps displace Americans who are not able to get those jobs. Certainly, ever since the early 1990s when Bill Clinton first won the presidency, the notion that the economy is the number one issue has been pretty reliable.

And we’ll see what happens in the next couple of months. We’ll see whether the Fed cuts interest rates in September, what the job figures look like, and if people have confidence going forward, that could tend to favour Kamala Harris. If they’re really worried about the economy, that would tend to favour Trump. And I think that shows up in the breakdown of different voters.

Republicans are hoping to get more Hispanic-American votes, more African-American votes, more Asian-American votes. Things are moving in that direction. I think that’s important for the party, and I think it’s very important in the Senate and House races, leaving the presidency aside, where I think Republicans do have some grounds for optimism that they will take control of the Senate and hold the House.

Alyson: Ambassador, you once said that you don’t think Trump knows when he is lying, that he has lost sight of what’s true and what’s false and he doesn’t really care. Do you still stand by those comments? And that can clearly be dangerous for any world leader? What do you say to that?

Bolton: Sure. That’s why I don’t think he’s fit to be president.

He lives in his own world and it’s not that he consciously lies because to lie, you have to know the difference between what’s true and what’s false. He just says what he wants to be. And if he’s not contradicted and corrected, he assumes he has persuaded others of it. So if you ask him about statistics, he just kind of makes them up as he goes.

And if he happens to get a number wrong, it’s no problem. He’ll just change it the next time. That is, I think, unsound basis for leadership in domestic American affairs, nor in international affairs, particularly.

Alyson: Right. And you called President Joe Biden an embarrassment for urging Israel not to respond to the Iran attack, adding that Israel is entitled to retaliate against Iran for its weekend attack. Do you still stand by those comments?

Bolton: Right. I think that the current conflict in the Middle East is not a Palestinian war or Gazan war against Israel. It’s an Iranian war against Israel working through its terrorist proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and others. And so Israel faces a very dangerous neighborhood and faces a number of strategic threats.

The source of the threats is Iran and their ring of fire strategy, as they call it, against Israel. As a former Secretary of State, Al Haig, used to say, when you see a problem and you want to solve it, go to the source.

Alyson: Absolutely. Ambassador John Bolton, thank you very much for being with us on Firstpost. We appreciate your time.

Bolton: Thanks for having me.