The Daily Beast Podcast - How Trump, 79, Is Being Exploited By His 'Friend'

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Ambassador John Bolton joins Hugh Dougherty to chart the growing dangers of Trump’s foreign policy, driven by impulse rather than strategy. Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, describes a president who ignores formal briefings, takes cues from Mar-a-Lago guests, and makes decisions by “neuron flash,” leaving Venezuela, Europe, and Ukraine trapped in contradiction and drift. As Trump chases a Nobel Prize and treats strongmen like personal allies, Bolton presses a defining question: How long can America’s security withstand a leader who refuses to plan? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump in the first term came to understand that when people said, but Mr. President, have you thought about this factor, that factor, or the other factor? Mr. President, have you considered alternatives A, B, C? Have you done the cost-benefit analysis? That he thought that myself, others, were trying to prevent him from making the decision he wanted. All I can say is we all understood he was president and he would make the final decision. The question is, is he going to make a well-informed decision, or is he going to do it via? in Neuron flash, which is its typical style. Welcome to The Daily Beast podcast. I'm Hugh Docherty, executive editor of The Daily Beast.

I am filling in for Joanna, who is, as I've said before, communing with the powerful of the world and also reading your comments from afar. Thank you to everyone who commented on our last interview with David Rothkoff, our brilliant columnist, one of the best informed people in DC. I have to agree with Marla, S.Y.8Q, great insights, intelligence, and a killer sense of humour. And also in the comments, yeah, but is it art, said, this must be the first time I agree with everything a guest is saying. I don't think you get higher praise than that. I have been in the comments and just one note from a personal point of view. Thank you for everyone who's mentioned

my Scottish accent, good or bad. I just want to clear up a minor debate about where I'm from in Scotland. Sorry to Mr. Rappanui, 9-H. You're very slightly out. I am not from Edinburgh or from Sterling, but Betcha of Wolf, nine, and a number of others are right. I am from Glasgow, very proudly so, and very happily sitting in the Daily Beast studios in Manhattan, where we are very grateful for everyone who subscribes and comments and especially our members. And it's thanks to our members that we have another great guest today who has been inside the Oval Office, time after time with Donald Trump, and he has lived to literally tell the tale. I'm talking about John Bolton, he was Donald Trump's national security advisor until September the 10th, 2019,

when he was fired after a tumultuous 17 months. He has since written a memoir, and of course he has felt the retribution of Trump. He has now being prosecuted at the instructions of Pam Bondi and charges of mishandling and leaking the nation's secrets, which he, of course, robustly denies. We last had him on just before the FBI raided his house, and a lot of people told us that you wanted to hear from him more. So thanks to our members and just quote some of them. SYSH 24 said John Bolton is a pure delight and Cote the Gear 3982 said you must him again. Many, many more of you said that. You asked and we are making that come true. Ambassador Bolton, thank you for joining us.

There's so many things that we could talk about but I want to talk about a big picture here. The White House, the administration, just released a 33-page document of a national security strategy. And Donald Trump's just in an interview with political, and he's kind of talked about foreign policy. Now, let's be honest, this is not a man who's known for reading or for taking things in. Where does he get his foreign policy from? What is shaping this? Well, you know, guests at Mara Lago have opinions that he listens to. He picks it up from random conversations with his friends. It comes from a variety of different places. He doesn't bother to check the facts. He thinks some of his interlocutors, the guests at Mara Lago, know more about

things than the CIA does, and I've heard him say that. As for this national security strategy, if the first term is any indication, he hasn't read it. He signed an introduction. Maybe he read the introduction that he signed. I don't know. But he didn't read it in the first term, and he didn't pay any attention to it. I don't think that Trump thinks at a conceptual level. I think he's very transactional episodic ad hoc. And I think this statement was put together by, this is more of a J.D. Vance, National Security Strategy, than a Trump document. It's, we could go on at length about it. It's incoherent, incomplete, contradictory. And much of what it says is not new and what it says that is new is wrong. So I just, it's a, it's a bad look for the United States. But in terms of,

will it guide or does it presage how Trump will make decisions in the United States? the future, I think the answer is no. You said it's a bad look for the United States. Just break that down. It talks a lot about Europe. It talks about Europe being in civilizational decline or civilizational erasure. And it talks about this hemisphere being our concern. Is that something people should be worried about? Well, those are things that Trump has basically said in the past. And I think what the authors of this were trying to do is ratify what Trump's already said and maybe predict where he might go or where they might like to go. But I don't think those are solid indications of what's actually on Trump's mind. You know, there was a furor at the

beginning of the administration when he talked about invading Canada. Well, we haven't heard much about that recently. And the reason he was saying it, in my view, the first time, was he didn't like Justin Trudeau. He didn't like him in the first term. He liked to call him governor rather than Prime Minister because it belittled Trudeau and that made Trump feel good. He's not doing that with Mark Carney, not that he necessarily gets along better with Carney, but it's a different tone. We haven't heard about the invasion of Greenland much recently either. So, you know, Trump has a short attention span.

Right now he's focused on Venezuela, although he doesn't know what to do there either. So I think this is, these are indications of the contradictions and incoherence of the strategy. I just make one more point on Europe, if I may. One of the key elements of the strategy is rejecting this kind of idea about neo-conservatives that they want to spread democracy around the world, which is a hopelessly abstract concept, and they're not going to do that. And they say, we're not going to interfere in decisions of sovereign states. We're not going to push our particular approach on them. And then they spend paragraph after paragraph denouncing Europe for not being democratic. I mean, it's a pretty hard line to draw to say, well, we're not going to

criticize anybody like Russia and China, but we will criticize the Europeans. And he just told political, oh, of course I'm going to keep endorsing people. I endorsed Orban, which obviously on the face of it is a complete contradiction to not interfering with any sort of democracy. Right, exactly. Let's go to Venezuela and what's happening in the seas around it. I was going to say in the Gulf, but even that's kind of contention. as to what to call the Gulf, because he's renamed it. But you were not just his national security advisor. You've had a long career in national security.

What is going on in the meetings and in the conferences where people are trying to make sense of what to do with what appears to be orders to shoot drug boats? I think one of the problems is you don't have the meetings and conferences through the National Security Council process that are intended to help the president make the most well-informed decisions. I don't think Trump ever understood what the NSC was all about. He used to ask me why I couldn't do the job with maybe eight or ten people instead of 350. And that's because he thinks decisions

are made by the seat of his pants, which is how he does most things and which is how decisions are being made now. I don't think there has been a careful formulation of what the objectives are, whether it's to overthrow Maduro, whether it's to interdict illegal drug trafficking, whether it's to stop terrorist activity, whether it's to prevent illegal immigration. In Trump's brain, I think they're all kind of mushed together. And I don't, this is a good example, Venezuela is a good example of how they're not doing strategy, which can be very simply defined. It's the stating of objectives and the rationalization of how you get your resources together

to accomplish the objectives. Why did they bring the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group from the European Theater to the Caribbean? in. Was it to overthrow Maduro? We don't know, but it's been there now for several weeks, and we still don't know what it's going to do. I think that's the cart before the horse. I think somebody got the bright idea to say, let's intimidate Maduro, let's have this show of force, and maybe he'll back away. Well, he hasn't backed away yet. So what do they do with it now? And with Maduro, should he be gone? Is there a case for this? Is there a scenario in

which is a good idea to go in and overthrow the government of Venezuela or persuade him to leave? Well, I think it's clearly in U.S. national security interest to have Maduro and the regime itself ousted. This was our position in the first term. We tried to do it by cooperating with the opposition in Venezuela, applying economic pressure. I don't think we applied enough economic pressure. The opposition made its move, and unfortunately it failed. But I think the reasons that we were concerned six or seven years ago are just as valid today. So I do think not just for the well-refer.

being of the Venezuelan people, which would materially improve if the regime were overthrown, but for U.S. national security purposes, it makes sense. But since we tried once and failed, it makes it all the more important that if we're going to try again, and I would support the use of military force to do it, that you get it right. And what I see is people sitting around the Oval Office saying, well, what do you think of this or what do you think of that? And and not going through the serious business of planning. I think Trump in the first term came to understand that when people said, but Mr. President, have you thought about this factor, that factor, the other factor? Mr. President, have you considered alternatives A, B, C? Have you done

the cost-benefit analysis that he thought that myself, others, were trying to prevent him from making the decision he wanted? All I can say is we all understood he was president and he would make the final decision. The question is, is he going to make a well-informed decision, or is he going to do it via neuron flash, which is its typical style? What's your read of what's behind that? Like, I mean, everybody in life is presented with complicated decisions, and, you know, the older and more senior people get, obviously those decisions become more and more complicated. Why rely on neuron flashes? Well, he thinks, Trump thinks that he doesn't need to know much about the situations or issues that are bargaining, he thinks relations between states are a function of

the relations between their leaders. So, for example, if he has good relations with Vladimir Putin, he thinks U.S. Russian state-to-state relations are good. And how you do a deal is you size up the person on the other side of the table and you just leave facts and details and stuff like that to your subordinates, you and the other big guy just get together and make the decision. And maybe that's how it works in New York real estate? I wouldn't know. It's not how it works internationally. And his unwillingness to consider the consequences of his actions leads him to do things that suddenly get very hard to unravel. You mentioned Putin, and one of the things that seems to have happened in the last few weeks or a few months is that Trump marches up one hill and marches down again.

He liked Zelensky, and now he's against Zelensky. He got on with Putin, and then he didn't, and now he's back in the camp. What's going on there? How can somebody who believes in the power of the neuron flash also be so erratic? Ambassador, hold that thought. We need to take a word from the people who pay our bills. And we are back talking about geopolitics and more importantly about Trump with John Bolton.

Well, he doesn't see it as erratic. His supporters talk about how he's playing this complex game of three-dimensional chess. No, he's not. He's barely doing this one move at a time. And I think that because he thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend in the context of Ukraine, he trusts Putin more than he trusts Zelensky. And I think what you're seeing is that Putin, going back to the first term, used his KGB training to figure out how to manipulate Trump. Other foreign leaders have figured it out, too. And I don't mean anything nefarious about KGB training.

It's, I mean, it boils down to assessing your targets' vulnerability. and then exploiting them. And I think that's what Putin has done with great success with Trump. Zelensky's worked hard to establish a personal relationship after the February debacle in the Oval Office. I give him a lot of credit for effort, but it doesn't take. And I think that's one reason now in the past few days Trump has been tilting back toward Putin. I mean, let's see where he is after Christmas. It could be the other direction again.

Can you just spell out, what is the danger of tilting towards Putin? Why should people worry about this? Well, if you're considering what the American national security interests are, as opposed to what I think Donald Trump is doing, which is trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize by having a peace deal in Ukraine, he doesn't care what it says. He doesn't care what the terms are. He just wants to be able to say, I made a deal. And it's one of the eight wars in eight months that I've stopped. I think he decided it's number nine, although. Nine, I'm sorry. Well, it's unclear of what exactly the number, you know, which war is which. Right. It varies from day to day, I'm sure, although he lists them in the national security strategy, so at least we have the compendium. The point is he's not making decisions on the basis of what's in America's national security interest. Our interest in the Ukraine is that this is an act of unprovoked by the aggression by the Russians against a country that's vital to Central Europe that has a clear impact on our interest in NATO and the ramifications of which affects, stability and security around the world, how the Chinese see the Western reaction in Ukraine

could dictate how China performs in East, Southeast, and South Asia. So this is a really significant importance to us, and so we should be asking, what is the resolution here that deters future aggression by the Russians and by the Chinese and by others that restores deterrence and brings back peace and security in Central Europe? Those are the questions to be addressed. That's not what Donald Trump is talking about. If you were back in the Oval Office, how would you try to tell Trump that? Well, you're not operating on a blank slate, obviously, at this point.

And I think it's very difficult to get him to back away from the direction he's taken. But you have to appeal to what's in his interest. In other words, what's going to make him look good? Unfortunately, at the moment, he's so fascinated by this idea of the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was in the first term, too, that I don't really. really know how to persuade him to think of the bigger picture or that he might look foolish if he simply accepts Putin's terms. That's what many people warned that say, don't worry, he won't be captured by Putin because he doesn't want to look foolish. Well, that guardrail

disappeared a long time ago. Trump seems to think that she is his friend. I mean, first of all, is he his friends? Look, I don't think people like Putin and Xi and Kim Jong-un have friends in that that regard. These are hard men. They know what their national interests are, and that's what they pursue. So I think Xi is very closely watching what's happening in Ukraine. And I think there may be a slight cultural bias here, but I think he's saying, you know, if the West won't stand up against aggression in Central Europe, they're not going to stand up against aggression on Taiwan or some other target in faraway Asia. They apply more to Europe. They apply more to Europe. Europe than to the United States, but I think that's

view. Xi has also had direct personal confrontation with Trump in this second term over economic issues. And my assessment is that Xi thinks he came away the winner. He created a crisis with

threatening to withhold the rare earths. Trump responded and then Trump back down. It's not exactly Taco Trump always chickens out, but I think she believes he knows how to go eyeball to eyeball with Trump and to win. The big test now will be when they meet in Beijing in April. In his first term, Trump wanted to make the biggest trade deal in human history with China.

He didn't make it. And I don't think the Chinese would have given us what we should ask for in our own national interest to make such a deal, but Trump still thinks he can make it. And he'd love to make it in time for this trip to China. And he's giving away things. He's allowing Invidia to sell the H-200 Chip, which many people think is a big mistake. He has made aspersions about Taiwan, most recently in the national security strategy and done a number of other things that indicate to me he's telling everybody, don't mess up this trade deal. I want this trade deal. Don't let anything get in the way of it. That's music to Xi Jinping's ears. And we saw that China has a record trade surplus of a trillion dollars, even after what Trump saw as tariffs on China.

So it looks like Trump's in a much weaker position even than he was before. Well, it appears that confronted with these tariffs are confronted with the prospect of even higher tariffs that Trump actually put in place with respect to China, that Beijing made a very aggressive campaign in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to increase its exports to those countries to make up for what they believed or feared would be the loss of trade with the U.S. And these statistics seem to me to prove that they were very successful at that. So I think coming into 2026, I think Xi Jinping thinks that he is pretty well placed to deal with Trump. And what he's trying to promote on a global basis beyond the trade issue is that China is a rock of stability, that you know what you get with China, parenthesis, as opposed to these Americans who have just elected this lunatic Trump. And in many countries, the idea of stable relations is very attractive. I think it's deceptively attractive, but G has worked that strategy and has been, to my mind, unfortunately, pretty successful at it.

And now, a word from our sponsors. Here we are back talking about whether it's really 3D chess that Trump is playing. Put yourself back in the Oval Office. Is there a way that you could try to get Trump to, in some way, not bow to she? Is there some way of getting inside his mind that would make him, stand up? Well, I think you have to point to things that look like Xi insulting him or treating him patronizingly, that kind of thing. Because as I said before, with Trump, it's always

personal. Forget about trade deficits and things like that. When it comes to dealing with Xi Jinping, you have to say to Trump, he's trying to humiliate you, he looks down on you, he's setting you up to put it in that kind of frame, and then to try and drive the actual policy behind the personal dissatisfaction that perhaps you could get Trump to feel about gee. The way Trump feels dissatisfaction with European leaders whom he regards is weak or deceptive, that kind of thing.

And is anybody at Marilago telling him any of this, or is it some other version? Because you've obviously had this experience of going in, I'd guess, on a Monday morning, maybe a Monday afternoon, and hearing the download from Trump of what he's been told. Right. Well, it's very unclear what decision-making process there is at all. As I've said, I don't think the National Security Council process is working. And when you combine Trump's short attention span with his proclivity to listen to the last person he talks to, it explains the continuing turmoil. I think that's a fact of life. That's a condition of employment at the White House that you have to understand that's how it goes. How do you see the people around him right now dealing with that? Because clearly, you know, you went in. You tried to deal with him on those terms. And he didn't engage with that.

But what do you see people around him doing now? Well, I think Trump took away from the first term the lesson that there were too many people around him who had too many opinions and didn't just say, yes, sir, when he said, I want to do something. So I believe across the administration, with a few exceptions, he's, he's, he's, he's try to get people who will simply salute and say, yes, sir. They won't trouble him with, well, have you considered this possibility, even though ultimately that kind of set of advisors of yes men and yes women, it's not good for the country.

Ultimately, ironically, it won't be good for Trump either because they won't warn him of dangers. They'll be too afraid of being viewed as obstructionist. And just to allude lightly to your experience, are people motivated, do you believe, by fear of retribution? The reason to say yes is because of being concerned about what might happen. I think that's a big part of it. And one of the interesting things is statistics are that Trump has withdrawn more nominations

for positions in his administration than any recent president. This term in the first year, he hasn't fired many people, though. And I think there he's worried that if we go back to the pattern of the first term, that he'll be accused of hiring all these incompetence, you ought to ask, well, who hired him in the first place? But he's in a difficult position. Now he has the set of advisors that he says he wanted that are going to make America great again,

unlike those people in the first term. So if he starts firing these people, you have to wonder when he's ever going to get it right. Ambassador Bolton, if he ever gets it right, I hope you'll come back and join us. I suspect that you'll be joining us before that would be my guess. Thank you for your time. Thank you for yourselves to the country and look forward to seeing you again in the future.

Well, thank you. Look forward to it myself. Well, is it 3D chess or is he eating the pieces? Is it drafts? Is it checkers? Does he know himself? We are going to keep up to date with every move from Trump on whichever board he's playing on, all the details of who's talking to him at Mar-a-Lago, and of course, every update on his health, which at 79 does seem more precarious and he's definitely nodding off more. please tell us in the comments what you think also tell us who you'd like to hear from

just hit join under the video it's not just getting your name read out in my mangled accent as a benefit of joining you also get exclusive access to live streams op-eds much more thank you to everyone for joining us thank you to the YouTube closed captioners who've been wrestling with my accent

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