Past 24 Hours – Special Edition

Bolton Book Revelations

Revelations Former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton’s Book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir”

• “He second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government,” Bolton wrote about what he witnessed during his tenure

• President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects.

• Trump told the Chinese president Xi Jinping that building concentration camps to “re-educate” Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang was the right thing to do.

•  President Trump committed impeachable offenses that House Democrats never investigated. It alleges Trump was willing “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked” if they investigated Biden.

• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considered resigning from his post in disgust or frustration with dealing with President Trump. Pompeo once slipped Bolton a note that said “he [Trump] is so full of shit.”

• President Trump said it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela and that the South American country was “really part of the United States.”

• Bolton describes a meeting in New Jersey in 2019 where Trump tears into journalists amid his ongoing consternation about leaks and says they should be forced to give up their sources. “These people should be executed. They are scumbags”

• Trump asked his then-Chief of Staff John Kelly if Finland was a part of Russia.

• In a meeting with then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018, a British official referred to the UK as a ‘nuclear power,’ and Trump interjected: ‘Oh, are you a nuclear power?’ Bolton writes he could tell the president’s question ‘was not intended as a joke.’

• The president defended Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi to distract attention from Ivanka Trump using personal email.

• Trump cared little about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal when he met with Kim Jong Un and was more interested in making friends with the dictator as he treated the historic meeting as “an exercise in publicity.”

“Trump told … me he was prepared to sign a substance-free communique, have his press conference to declare victory and then get out of town.”

The president was fixated on getting an autographed Elton John CD of the song “Rocket Man” to Kim. Trump mocked Kim for several years using that as a nickname meant to belittle the North Korean leader.

• “I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle,” Bolton said of the world leader many policy experts consider the leading U.S. adversary. “It’s a very difficult position for America to be in.”