The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with Donald Trump's Former National security advisor John Bolton about Tariffs, Russia/Ukraine, and More

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben speaks with Donald Trump's Former National security advisor about Tariffs, Russia/Ukraine, and More Guest: Ambassador John Bolton, Former National security advisor to President Donald Trump If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to own part of the company that makes your favorite burger? Now you can. With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Look, in any negotiation, if you are a good negotiator, you want to put yourself in the mind of the person on the other side of the table. You want to know what they want so that you can find a way for everybody to walk away from that negotiation happy. And unfortunately in Canada, we have no idea what Donald Trump wants in this tariff war.

He keeps changing, moving the goal posts. He keeps saying it's one thing and then making it about something else. And I would love just a little clarity on what makes this man tick and what his ultimate end game is. And so in order to perhaps get us a little bit closer to that answer, I'm truly honored to be joined by somebody who worked for him as a national security advisor.

And he also spent time working for three other presidents, Ambassador John Bolton. Ambassador, welcome to the show. Glad to be with you, thanks for having me. Okay, so I put the question to you, sir. What does, in this tariff war, in this seemingly realignment of world trade, what is Donald Trump looking for from Canada?

Well, I don't think he really knows. I don't think he fully understands the objective with Canada, mexico or anybody else he he has this idea that tariffs will bring back some kind of golden age going back to william mckinley uh... it shows how little history he knows or how much things have changed since william mckinley's administration uh... i know in canada there's some theories that

this is all bargaining to slice off a piece here or there and He says things to that effect, but but I can assure you this is not a man playing three-dimensional chess This is somebody playing regular chess one move at a time one move only at a time I'm reminded of what does Steve Bannon said during Donald Trump's first administration. He referenced their tactic of what he called flooding the zone with so many different stories that would confuse the press and they really wouldn't know what story to follow. Kevin O'Leary referred to it as differentiating between the noise and the signal.

And I think that's what we're all trying to figure out. What is the signal here? We can't get a hold on it and now you recently were on global news with mercedes-stevenson where you said that mark Carney won't improve Canada-U.S. relations by matching Trump and I'm wondering mr. ambassador is there a difference between you know are you talking about his tone or are you talking about the tariffs? You know, I'm talking about tone as much as anything. I mean, it's Trump. Trump doesn't say things with long range objectives in mind.

He sort of says whatever comes into his head on any given day. And in terms of noise versus signal, one friend of mine came up with the idea that in the Trump administration, the thing to do if you have your TV set on with Trump is just turn the sound off and don't pay attention to what's coming out of his mouth. Just focus on what's actually happening, which is not bad advice. The key to trying to get things put back to some kind of normalcy is to figure out what to say to Trump about why doing so would be to his personal interest. Don't talk about how badly the tariffs are affecting Canada. Don't talk about how badly a trade war will affect the United States. Talk about how it will affect Donald Trump's

place in history, why it will decrease his personal popularity. Go after it that way. I've suggested for poor Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, for example, that that he needs to tell Trump he's going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize and do it quickly before somebody else does it. There may be some kind of comparable thing that Carney can do, but that is what you have to focus on. I know how hard it is for political leaders in other countries because it's hard for political leaders in the U.S. to understand Trump does not do policy. It's totally transactional, episodic, ad hoc, and filtered through the prism of,

how's this benefit me? I am speaking with Ambassador John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump in his first term. And Mr. Ambassador, a lot of us woke up today to some pretty stunning news that Donald Trump was looking to rescind the Biden pardons that he made on his last day, claiming that because he believes they were signed with what they call an auto pen, they were not valid. And look, I don't know anything

about what regulates pardons, but it feels to me like this is something he's hoping to get away with and he's just, that he does can't necessarily do it but he's daring somebody to stop him what can you add to this conversation no I think I think that's probably true number one the Constitution doesn't say anything about a president having to sign pardons and in fact the issue has come up in other contexts what you need is the president to make a clear manifestation of a decision.

So for example, does the president have to sign a document saying documents A, B, and C are classified top secret? No. If he says, I want these documents classified top secret and there are 10 people in the room, he doesn't have to sign a document. He can sign it later to make the decision permanent, to make it physical. But as long as the president has made a clear decision, that's binding whether he signs it himself, whether he signs it with an auto pen, or whether the staff secretary at the

White House sends it out. We deal in substance, not form when it comes to presidential decisions. So really what Trump is saying is that Biden was asleep at the Swinney and didn't even know it happened. I can't speak to that either, but it's a way that obviously he wants to go after the January 6th committee, the congressional committee that investigated the events of that day, and he's trying to find a way to invalidate the part. It will fail, but it will cost people a lot of legal fees. Yeah.

Trump's great for the legal industry, even as he's attacking part of it. His legal fees are paid by the taxpayers of the United States who fund the Justice Department. Donald Trump has said he will talk to Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. He's pushing for an end to the Ukraine war. And I don't think there's anyone who even has a slight idea of what's going on in the region, that this was going to end any other way but through a peace treaty. I don't think anybody thinks today

that Ukraine was going to walk away with victory in hand. But I think a lot of people are surprised that in the process of trying to bring these sides together, Donald Trump does seem to prefer Vladimir Putin over Zelensky and Ukraine. And I'm wondering if you think that signals a significant shift in American policy and worldview. Well, I think Trump has flipped the US position 180 degrees from being supportive of Ukraine to being supportive of Russia.

And it's one of many disturbing changes that he's made. I don't think the American people, a majority of them or anywhere close to it, agree with Trump on this. He didn't campaign to sell out Ukraine to Russia or to destroy NATO in the process. I know this is a very frustrating time, but frustrating for a lot of Americans too, to see Trump make these decisions. I don't think foreign governments or foreign citizens should take what Trump is doing as representative of where the rest of the United States is. He's going to cause a lot of damage.

The more damage that he causes, the harder it will be to put institutions like NATO back together. But writing off the United States simply on the basis of Trump's behavior, notwithstanding he's president, that's pretty obvious, but writing off the United States permanently ends up hurting the West as a whole. Lastly, Mr. Ambassador, Donald Trump to me, doesn't strike me as somebody who evolves.

I think he is who he is and he's not a very curious man, so he doesn't learn, but in this short time that we've been experiencing the set this second term What do you think is the biggest difference between Trump's first administration and this one? Well, I don't think he ever really thought he'd win in 2016 He didn't prepare for the White House the transition was a disaster the first six months People were coming and going nobody who knew knew really knew what to do to run a government. This time, he's been stewing for four years at Mar-a-Lago.

The staff who were loyal to him even after January the 6th stuck with him. They spent four years figuring out what they wanted to do, and that's why the first two months look like shock and awe. Whether they can keep it up is very different. This is the period when we'll see whether the Constitution stands up. I think it will, but there's no doubt there's gonna be damage caused

in the process of proving that point. Ambassador John Bolton, I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your day to speak with us here on the Ben Mulroney Show. Hope to do it again soon. Well, thanks for having me. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization.

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