When John Bolton first reported for duty as Donald Trump's National Security Adviser, I must admit I thought we were doomed.
I thought that Bolton was a deranged hawk who would encourage the maniac Trump rather than restrain him.
And that together they would, intentionally or not, blow us all up.
But a funny thing happened during Bolton's stint in the Oval Office...
His feverish calls for war forced Trump to restrain Bolton.
Now he's fired him.
President Trump announced on Tuesday that he had fired John R. Bolton, his third national security adviser, amid fundamental disagreements over how to handle major foreign policy challenges like Iran, North Korea and most recently Afghanistan.
And it sounds like it wasn't pretty.
“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service.”
But then it also sounds like we dodged a bullet.
If Mr. Trump’s original national security team was seen as restraining a mercurial new commander in chief, the president found himself sometimes restraining Mr. Bolton. Behind the scenes, he joked about Mr. Bolton’s penchant for confrontation. “If it was up to John, we’d be in four wars now,” one senior official recalled the president saying.
I have no idea how the maniac Bolton got within striking distance of the nuclear button.
And like the Times Editorial Board I'm not expecting much to change.
Mr. Bolton’s departure seems unlikely to make the American national security apparatus any less dysfunctional, with many top positions vacant and allies confused about whom to deal with. Mr. Trump clearly likes things this way. The White House may be in turmoil, alliances may be trembling and adversaries may be seeking advantage, but that all just amounts to more drama, more suspense, more television coverage — all of it with Donald Trump at the center.
But not having the maniac Bolton advising the maniac Trump is something to celebrate.
And I think we can all sleep a little sounder tonight...
Good riddance to the nuclear mustache. Now a word from another displaced WH Apprentice contestant, Tony "Da Mooch":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/anthony-scaramucci-trump-intimidated-good-looking-justin-trudeau_n_5d75d609e4b0645135709902
"President Trump is very intimidated by Justin Trudeau because he's a good-looking, smart kid and President Trump is like this orange, fat blob. And he's so very intimidated by the way the guy looks. ... It basically has to do with very low self-esteem. I mean the guy has the self-esteem of a small pigeon."
It would be very wrong for the same Resistance twitterers who got #ScheerIsSoPoorThat trending to tweet this article repeatedly to @realDonaldTrump, lest he say something bad about Trudeau in a close election and cause Canadians to rally around their prime minister.
So please don't do this, and whatever you do, don't share any photos of Ivanka and Melania lustin' for Justin. It might cause the most unpopular president in Canada since Richard Nixon (or George Bush?) to endorse Andrew Scheer, and of course, we wouldn't want that...
The war monger vs the fear monger battle royale has ended with revoltin' Bolton boltin' for the door. Unable to adhere to Trump's hug-a-thug foreign relations shtick, he retreats back to Fox News or perhaps do commercials to remind us that we need more fibre in our diets to keep us regular in this thoroughly irregular world. Something Trump should seriously consider for his dumpster-esque gastrointestinal tract.
ReplyDeleteJD
Trump has not changed since his days in the private sector. A wall of lawyers to wear down any claims of illegal wrongdoing and the Apprentice "your fired" to enhance his image as a business shark. Perhaps a refreshing change from the D.O.A Bush era but the long term effects will likely be catastrophic if that is possible. Then again perhaps the whole US foreign policy is being run by a quantum super computer and "out of normal historic events" are required to test the predictive accuracy of the program. Who better than a reality show actor. Then again I thought the same thing when Bush took the helm and look how that turned out. Its still inconceivable that although US military predictive/computing technology is probably at least ten years in advance of whats in the public domain yet political policies are outdated by 75 years or more.
ReplyDeleteRT