It looks like John Bolton’s first act of revenge after getting cashiered as Trump’s National Security Adviser was to go whining to reporters with the Wall Street Journal. It’s half of a plan, but why is Bolton dishing about stuff that only egghead liberals care about?
Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
“Where’s my favorite dictator?” Mr. Trump called out in a voice loud enough to be heard by the small gathering of American and Egyptian officials. Several people who were in the room at the time said they heard the question.
The witnesses said they believed the president made the comment jokingly, but said his question was met by a stunned silence.
Among the Americans present for this supposed joke were “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and then-national security adviser John Bolton.”
I doubt the Egyptian president appreciated Trump’s remark, as it wasn’t flattering and showed a typical American condescension. It was a careless and undiplomatic mistake by the president, but obviously not out of character. If the point is that he was serious and he really does love dictators and Al Sisi best of all, well, we already knew that he has an odd infatuation with loathsome dictators. I suppose we should be grateful that his number one doesn’t reside in Moscow or Pyongyang.
This just seems like a really toothless move by Bolton that shows he really does care what his peers in the Establishment think. But if he wants to hurt Trump, he’ll have to do better than this.
“undiplomatic mistake”?
mistake |məˈstāk| noun • something, especially a word, figure, or fact, that is not correct; an inaccuracy.
1) Trump doesn’t make mistakes
2) His description was not inaccurate
So much for the supposed grand champion of bureaucratic infighting, eh?
Since Bolton’s relatively young and thinks he still has a long and consequential (not to say historic) future ahead of him in the FP game, ala Kissinger, he perhaps thinks he has to tread a fine line between the neocon wing of “conservatism” (or which he is a founding member) and the Frankenstein monster of National Trumpalism that “conservatism” hath begot. So some (very tepid) “revelations” that marginally embarrass the Great Leader are probably the optimal ticket–to the extent this ho-hum story even embarrasses Trumper. It’s also not beyond Der Trumper to recycle the past courtiers and stooges of his regime as the empty positions keep mounting.
He dares not embarrass our leader too much or he will suffer the consequence of the Twitter machine, our dear leader is expert at the personal insult machine.
Bolton doesn’t self-identify as a neocon and I’m not sure I’d classify him as one. He’s certainly more heterodox. Bolton is just “America First”, bomb them until they kneel under our boots of American hegemony. They can be democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, colonies, it doesn’t matter.
Trump seems too fearful of losing too many American lives, so he’s not afraid of bombing like Bolton is, but in some ways knows that escalation would make him more unpopular than he already is. Thus he’d prefer the spectacle of a “deal” after maximum pressure, Iran giving in to his clenched fist and on his terms.
This is actually something of a peace offering by Bolton to Trump, one that is unlikely to be successful, but what can he do? If Bolton wanted to really hurt Trump he’d have to paint him as a Traitor by revealing details of his cronyism to Putin, or perhaps more evidence of his shocking personal corruption, or best of all, some statements of Trump that would be seen as disrespecting his base. But, the White Nationalist Trumpites don’t care a damn about any of that.
What is Bolton really to do? He’s rather in the position of Franz Von Papen to Trump’s Hitler. Von Papen. He was a strutting militarist and political figure of the “I’m in public service because I’m such a superior person! Captain! Have one of the men ensure that my jeweled snuff box is kept liberally supplied” school of Conservative politics.
So he was strutting around the Conservative scene long before the Austrian upstart, but when Hitler seized power (upon his recommendation), he was forced to genuflect and ended up serving Hitler, helping him burn down the Reichstag.
Trump has formed an openly fascist movement. He doesn’t quite dare send his slavish followers marching into liberal neighborhoods like the Brown Shirts, but he has ICE for that. There is no remote prospect of any Conservative Republican President during Bolton’s lifetime that isn’t Trump or one of his cronies or idiot children. He can either stay on board the train or get off, but he’s seen what happens to anybody who gets off and starts spouting details attacking Trump’s sanity, fitness for office, corruption or any other defect. They get instantly attacked and marginalized and threatened with prosecution. Bolton doesn’t want that.
He’s simply bowing to the reality of power in the Trump Era, while entering a sort of bleating whine into the record for personal satisfaction. He’s certainly not going to join the “Never-Trumpers” in the wilderness. He’s enjoyed the prerogatives of being a player on the right-wing strutting militarist power-player for far too long to step down now over some matter of principle.
Since when have right wingers ever had any real principles they wouldn’t sacrifice on the alter of power? Bolton wants to hold onto his seat in the Circus, because it’s the only game in town.