We'll be getting more nuggets as the days go by out of the book "The Room Where
--Trump asked China's President Xi for help with his reelection, specifically to purchase agricultural products from farm belt states that he needs in his column.None of this is surprising in the context of what we've known about Trump odious behavior for years now. Sadly, the book is already on the New York Times best seller list, even though it won't be published until Tuesday. Trump's corrupt Attorney General William "Low" Barr is seeking to stop the release of the book, an action that will almost certainly fail. Bolton had a duty to appear before the House Impeachment Committee last year to testify about Trump's Ukraine extortion and more, but refused to. We can keep tainted money from the sale of the book out of Bolton's pockets by relying on press accounts like these instead.
--Trump sought to interfere in ongoing criminal investigations that impacted authoritarian regimes like Turkey and China to curry favor with their leaders.
--Trump is stunningly ignorant about even the basic facts about the world, for example that the UK is a nuclear power.
--Trump indicated his approval of Xi's construction of concentration camps for the minority Muslim Uighur people, a major human rights violation.
--Trump is mocked by his staff behind his back; for example, cowardly blob Secretary of State Mike Pompeo passed a note to Bolton during Trump's 2018 summit with Kim Jong-Un that said, "He's so full of shit", referring to Trump.
UPDATE: During an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Bolton also said what most of us have known since Trump swanned down the escalator at Trump Tower: that Trump doesn't have "the competence to carry out the job" and is "not fit for office." Raddatz's full interview with Bolton airs on ABC this Sunday from 9-10 P.M. Eastern time.
(photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
2 comments:
Most news outlets got the same set of passages from Bolton's book, so a lot of the analysis is repetitive at this point. I was never a fan of Bolton, as he was a warmonger and “smartest guy in the room” type. But according to accounts from people who know Bolton, he's always been a very careful notetaker. I don't doubt his word and I expect that his book is jammed with information that will confirm what we already know: Trump is an incompetent, greedy con artist who has ruined our country and the rule of law.
But I'd never buy the book. Bolton could have testified at the impeachment trial, or if denied by Republicans, he could have just held a press conference and let fly. We'll never know of the Republicans in the Senate would have changed their votes, and they probably wouldn't have, but he should have done it.
I hope everything he wrote is true and he gets to release it. If it changes a few minds for the better and convinces some Republicans that Trump is truly a crook, then that's worth it. If it's lies, Trump wouldn't be trying to halt the release. So we shall see.
donnah -- Let's see if the House calls him to testify, now that he has no rational excuse for not appearing. The good news is that Simon and Schuster has already shipped thousands of copies to retailers, so the book is out of the bag.
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