June 18, 2020: John Bolton Goes from "Patriot" to "Wacko"

 

6/18/20: Unemployment claims for the last reporting period totaled 1.5 million. That means the economy is still suffering, despite the end of coronavirus lockdowns across most of the U.S.

 

This brings the total who have filed for unemployment in thirteen weeks to 46 million, a staggering toll. It also makes Trump’s brag about adding 2.5 million jobs in May seem ludicrous.

 

*

There are 800,000 young people under DACA protection.

____________________ 

“The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life.” 

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton

____________________

 

 

TEAM TRUMP is currently busy trying to block release of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s new book. The cover story they’re floating is that Bolton included “classified information.” 

Since advance copies have already gone out to news organizations it may be too late to avoid the damage. That is, damage to the image of Donald J. Trump. According to The New York Times, Bolton is said to have torched the president in his book. Start with the small idiocies. Bolton said his boss had to ask if Finland was part of Russia. (Dear MAGA fans: It’s not.) Trump also had to ask if Great Britain, one of our closest allies, had nukes. (It has since 1952). 

Then you have the serious issues, the threats to the rule of law, and diplomacy shaped in service to the president’s personal interest. Bolton says he heard Trump offer “personal favors to dictators he liked,” including the leaders of Turkey and China. It wasn’t just Trump asking Ukraine to get the dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden if they wanted military aid. Trump did do that, Bolton says. It was worse. “The pattern,” Bolton writes, in regard to Trump’s foreign policy-making decisions, “looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life.” That included the president promising to “intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor Mr. Xi.”

 

According to Bolton, during negotiations with North Korea even Sec. of State Mike Pompeo had had more of Trump than he could stand. Bolton says Pompeo passed him a note, saying of their boss, “He is so full of shit.” 

Expect Pompeo to kiss Trump’s ass and deny he passed said note. Expect Bolton to still have it? 

One can hope. 

On the topic of ass-smooching, you may forget the sequence of events revolving around Bolton, the Trump impeachment hearings, and, later, the no-witnesses-trial put on in the U.S. Senate. First, the Democratic House committees investigating Trump’s dealings with Ukraine subpoenaed Bolton. Next the White House blocked his testimony and Team Trump ignored all House subpoenas. When it was their turn to examine the matter, Republicans in the Senate puckered up and decided not to invite Bolton to testify, even though he said he was willing.

 

It’s kind of fun now to remind Trump fans what their orange-tinted hero tweeted during the early stages of the impeachment investigation: 

The D.C. Wolves and Fake News Media are reading far too much into people being forced by Courts to testify before Congress. I am fighting for future presidents and the Office of the President. Other than that, I would actually like people to testify [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted]. Don McGahn’s respected lawyer has already stated that I did nothing wrong.

 

John Bolton is a patriot and may know that I held back the money from Ukraine because it is considered a corrupt country, & I wanted to know why nearby European countries weren’t putting up money also.

 

Bolton now writes that he suspected ulterior motives all along, in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. As related by the Times: 

On Aug. 20, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Trump “said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.” Mr. Bolton writes that he, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper tried eight to 10 times to get Mr. Trump to release the aid.

 

That, according to Bolton, is the famous “quid pro quo,” which Republicans in both the House and Senate swore at great length never existed. 

On another occasion, an angry president suggested that “these people,” his critics in the free press, “should be executed.” 

Bolton also writes that his boss told President Xi of China that if he wanted to lock up millions of Chinese citizens – in this case Muslims – in concentration camps, “Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

 

On another occasion, Bolton says Trump talked to Xi on the sidelines at a Group of 20 summit. Xi mentioned that certain political figures in the United States were trying to stir up trouble between the countries. 

According to the Times: 

“Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” (Mr. Bolton says he would have printed Mr. Trump’s exact words, “but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”)

 

* 

YOU COULD TELL, early reports about what Bolton was saying were getting to the president. He was up late tweeting Wednesday, firing off this classic of Trumpian philosophy: 

Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious” (New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope! 

 

Trump also noted that Bush 43 had fired Bolton, failing to mention that he, Donald J. Trump, did not fire Bolton. 

Bolton resigned. 

Secondly, are we noticing a trend?  According to Trump, he hired terrible people and he suspected they were terrible all along. (See also: Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, Omarosa, Cohen, Sessions, et. al.)

 

Thursday morning, Trump was right back at it, attacking Bolton, before he finished could even digest his presidential Pop Tarts breakfast. For starters, he tweeted: 

Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is! 

 

If you follow this delusional president on Twitter, as, for some unfathomable reason, Mr. Blogger does, you know he has referred to a large number of human beings as “sick,” “sick puppies,” or some variation. 

For example, you have CNN anchors: “sick losers.” Lamestream media: “corrupt & sick.” Rep. Adam Schiff: “a very sick man,” “sick puppy,” “he is sick.” Nancy Pelosi: “a very sick person.” The New York Times: “a very sick joke,” “sick journalism.” Bette Midler: “a sick scammer.” 

The list is always expanding. Democrats are “sick and disgusting.” Chris Cuomo: “dumb and sick.” Sleepy Joe and Democrats: “sick & demented ideas.” Reporters he doesn’t like: “very dangerous and sick.” Mueller and his investigators: “very sick and dangerous.” Peter Strzok: “sick loser.” Sen. Jon Tester: “very dishonest and sick.” James Comey: “very sick or very dumb.” Megyn Kelly: “sick & the most overrated person on tv.” Karl Rove: just plain “sick.” 

My favorite, because Trump really loads up on some of his favorite insults, would be his attack on Rosie O’Donnell, “a mentally sick woman, a bully, a dummy and, above all, a loser.”

 

* 

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the DACA program, which protects hundreds of thousands of young “Dreamers” from being deported, many to countries they no longer remember. 

The ruling is 5-4, in favor of preserving DACA, which makes it final. Except in the mind of Joseph Edlow, Deputy Director for Policy with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A recent Trump appointee, Edlow apparently no more understands the U.S. Constitution than the man who appointed him to his post. He complains that the court’s decision has “no basis in law.” 

As Mr. Blogger’s old students should remember, the judicial branch of government “interprets the laws.” When all else is done the U.S. Supreme Court has the final say in deciding what the laws mean.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: In August, a federal judge blasts Edlow and his superiors during a court hearing. U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis tells lawyers for DHS that they should tell, first, Attorney General Bill Barr, and, second, then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, that he finds it disturbing that anyone in the executive branch would so question a Supreme Court decision. 

The attorney general should know, says the judge, “that it is not [a] benefit to anyone to have a federal agency take issue with a decision of the Supreme Court. I’m very troubled by anyone who would write such a thing on a document issued by a federal agency regarding a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court or any court, until it is overruled or reversed, any federal court.” 

(Again, members of Team Trump act as if there’s only one branch of government, and Donald J. Trump can do as he pleases.)