John Bolton on Trump, Iran, and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy

Michael Medved:
John Bolton was America's ambassador to the United Nations under the Bush administration. He was assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, one of the top-ranking people in American foreign policy for President Trump. He is the author of the triumphant bestseller, which is a great read, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir." It's available in paperback now.

John, it was also recently revealed that the Iranians wanted to assassinate you. Are you still under some kind of federal protection, I hope?

John Bolton:
I am, yeah. I've had the Secret Service since late 2021 and feel very, very safe and secure. But, you know, it's interesting that obviously after Qasem Soleimani's early exit in 2020, the Iranians had named a number of people they wanted to go after, including Trump. But the news this week that maybe they had actually begun to mount some kind of operation I found very interesting. Not the smartest thing for Iran to do during the middle of a presidential election campaign, if it turns out to be accurate, but also wouldn’t be the first time they’d done something stupid with respect to America.

Michael Medved:
Something stupid and threatening and horrible. Speaking of stupid and threatening and horrible, there are questions that were raised at the Republican Convention about why it is that Vladimir Putin didn’t attack Ukraine while Trump was president of the United States. You were there in the foreign policy shop. Do you think it's true that Putin was deterred by Trump successfully projecting an image of strength?

John Bolton:
Not in the slightest. In fact, what Putin heard from Trump on at least a couple of occasions, including one phone call I can think of between them, was scorn from Trump about Vladimir Zelensky, and I think Putin was taking that all in. We all saw obviously the famous "perfect" phone conversation in the summer of 2019 between Trump and Zelensky that led to the impeachment. I think Putin was just sitting there watching Trump come under fire, wondering, you know, perhaps if he got elected and reelected in 2020, that would be the time to do something. Or maybe he’d get Biden as president, and then he could size him up. But Putin has to pick the time he wants to go, and I think if we look back, we'll see that he just wasn’t ready in 2019-2020. It had nothing to do with Trump; it had to do with his own calculation.

Michael Medved:
So do you feel the same way about the Middle Eastern war? In other words, one of the claims that was made repeatedly at the Republican Convention is "there would have been no Hamas attack on Israel if Trump were still president." Does that argument have any credibility in your eyes?

John Bolton:
I don't think so. I mean, Trump has got a modest art form going of making statements that are neither provable nor disprovable. They're counterfactual assertions about how wonderful he is and, you know, they're always retrospective. So, you know that what he says he had predicted or said came true because it happened several years ago. It's that kind of statement that, in my view, indicates he just doesn't fundamentally understand what's going on in international affairs and, I think, should show to voters that he didn’t learn anything during four years in office. He hasn't learned anything in four years out of office, and it's why a second Trump term will be as chaotic and potentially dangerous as his first term.

Michael Medved:
Wouldn't you say more dangerous? You've written recently about the Republican Party facing the risk of the virus of isolationism. Would you say that the choice for vice president has caught that virus in a very serious case?

John Bolton:
Yeah. Look, Trump, as other observers have said, is doubling down on picking Vance. He really is a mini-me for Trump, and I think what Vance did, his transformation, was explained by his desire to get elected senator from Ohio in 2022. And he has been, on national security at least, plotting where he thinks Trump is going to be and trying to get there first so that he can then offer advice and be able to transform Trump into a kind of mentor. Which he has apparently done it; it’s gotten him the vice presidency. I don't see Vance necessarily influencing Trump. I think he'll be Trump's mouthpiece, basically.

Michael Medved:
But he becomes a mouthpiece for the entire party. The question is, what would you say to people who said that America has more concerns about places like Middletown, Ohio, where JD Vance was raised? That people should be more concerned about those rundown and sometimes suffering cities than they should be concerned about what's going on in Ukraine?

John Bolton:
That you have to be concerned about the world you live in to make sure that you have the opportunity to fix the problems in your own society. If you don't have a strong American posture internationally, you can't preserve and improve the economy and society we have today. By the same token, if our society here is weak, if our economy is weak, we can't maintain a strong presence overseas. So the two are certainly related. But it's also the case that the United States as a free country can walk and chew gum at the same time. And the notion that there's a trade-off that inevitably saps your ability to protect yourself overseas, I just think is historically mistaken. It's like people who say "Joe Biden cares more about Ukraine's border with Russia than he cares about the US border with Mexico." It's a total non sequitur, and a functioning administration, which this one isn’t particularly, can handle those two problems and many more besides.

Michael Medved:
Do you believe that it's true that the United States, or at least the Republican Party, is losing confidence in NATO and any of our offshore alliances?

John Bolton:
I don't think that's so. In fact, there's been polling, very interestingly, of self-declared MAGA Republicans who are very supportive of NATO. I mean, I think what's happened with Trump and Vance—who articulates what Trump feels better than Trump can—is that they represent a very small sliver of the party and don’t really reflect where the majority stands. In fact, Trump and Vance don't agree on key points. Vance has said as recently as this week that we need to back away from Ukraine to concentrate on the main threat represented by China. And China is a huge threat, there's no doubt about it. The country most threatened by China is Taiwan. And yesterday Trump basically said we shouldn't be defending Taiwan. So, you know, Vance and Trump have to have their own conversation here to figure out what they really believe.

Michael Medved:
And wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall? Well, actually, you were there in the room where it happened the first time. That's the name of the book by John Bolton, "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," which is exciting, revealing, and ultimately very profoundly important. John Bolton, I look forward to speaking to you the next time.