The Daily Beast Podcast - I Know Why War Time Trump Is Out of His Depth

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

John Bolton joins Joanna Coles to help us understand what it’s like working with Donald Trump during moments of maximum peril, when generals and intelligence chiefs are trying to brief a president who, Bolton says, often prefers talking to listening. Drawing on his time as national security advisor during Trump’s first term, he describes a commander in chief uncomfortable in the Situation Room, dismissive of the structured National Security Council process created under the National Security Act of 1947, and prone to reversing decisions—even after operations were underway. As Trump weighs a potentially prolonged confrontation with Iran, Bolton assesses whether he has the patience to sustain it, why Benjamin Netanyahu has proved especially effective at influencing him, and how mixed messaging to Congress and allies weakens America’s hand when American lives are at stake in the Gulf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, they're trying to provide him with information they think president should have in front of him, and often he just didn't care about that or wasn't taking it on board or couldn't process it, but it was a different experience than I've seen with any other American president. I think it's a problem. I think it's clear in the second term he feels more at ease making these decisions, but it doesn't mean he considers in any more detail or at any greater length or scope what exactly the implications are of what he's doing. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Can you imagine what it must be like being in the room trying to brief Donald Trump on matters of national intelligence, of whether or not we should bomb Iran, of where even Iran is?

I literally can't. And I can't imagine being a senior military official trying to explain the complexity of pulling together troops in the Gulf. and also trying to explain how important it is to talk to our allies and message our allies about what we're doing. But of course, one man who has tried and lived to tell the tale and tells the tale incredibly bravely and frankly is John Bolton. And whatever you think of John Bolton's policies, his ability to articulate what it's like to be in the room with Donald Trump. when Donald Trump is doing anything but listening to what is being said is, I think, really illuminating, it's alarming, it's unnerving, and it's really unmissable. I found his insights into the complexity of the power dynamics in the room when you have President Trump and you have the Joint Chiefs of Staff, really fascinating.

And, well, anyway, you can see for yourself. I loved talking to him. Ambassador Bolton, thank you so much for joining us again. Last time you were on the Daily Beast podcast, you told us a little bit about what it was like actually briefing Donald Trump when you were his national security advisor. Can you remind us of that?

Because clearly it's an incredibly important role, which has now fallen to Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. But from Trump, one, what was your role? experience of briefing him? Well, Trump didn't take briefings all that seriously, whether intelligence briefings or other kinds of briefings. He would frequently talk more than the intelligence briefers, which makes it hard to consume intelligence. Lyndon Johnson once said, I found that I don't learn very much when I'm talking, which is a remarkable thing for somebody like Lyndon Johnson to say, but obviously Trump had never heard that. Trump, Trump believed

that international relations are embodied in the personal relationships he has with foreign leaders. So, for example, he believes he's good friends with Vladimir Putin and therefore that the U.S. and Russia have good state-to-state relations. I mean, personal relations are important in all aspects of human life, but they're not the dominant factor in foreign affairs. It's state interest and values that dominate. Vladimir Putin doesn't think he's Donald Trump's friend. He thinks he's the leader of Russia.

and he knows what he wants. So watching Trump make these decisions can be very difficult. He doesn't have a philosophy. He doesn't have a national security grand strategy. He doesn't even do policy the way we normally understand it. And I think you see those characteristics already just in the first four or five days playing out in this action against Iran. So it's incredibly helpful to sort of hear that. Can you describe what it's like being in the room with the president when you have very senior military leaders? What's the sort of juxtaposition of power like? Because on the one hand, obviously the president is the most powerful man in the room. But then on the other, the joint chiefs of staff have extreme military knowledge that has to be downloaded in some way.

What is that sort of chemistry like? Well, I found that President Trump was often very uncomfortable chairing a National Security Council meeting in the situation room. When the president chairs, that's what an NSC meeting is. When the National Security Advisor chairs it, it's called a meeting of the Principles Committee. But it's when the president is chairing it, that it's potentially a real decision-making meeting. And the situation rooms are kind of cramped conference rooms, sometimes filled. with people sitting behind the principals who sit at the actual table that the president doesn't know. And he felt much more comfortable doing things in the Oval Office, sitting behind

the resolute desk with a few senior advisors in those chairs you've seen in a semicircle in front of the desk because it was more his office than the Situation Room. He's the only president I've seen who felt uncomfortable in the Situation Room. And what was, what do you think the discomfort was about? Do you think it was because he'd, you know, claimed bones spurs when he would have got called up to Vietnam? What is that discomfort about? I think it was because there were a lot of people in the room who knew a lot more about what we were talking about than he did. Look, every president has his own decision-making style. It's our job to adopt to him. He doesn't have to do it the way others have done it. The question is, whatever path he chooses, is he getting

the information that he needs? And often I was worried that Trump, wasn't getting it, wasn't taking it on board. In my experience with him, he had two chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, a four-star Marine General, and then Mark Milley, a former Army Chief of Staff and a four-star Army General. I can tell you that every senior military official that I ever saw Trump with, including Dan Kane, who was then in command of U.S. operations in Syria that we met at the Al-Assad Air Force Base in Iraq the day after. Christmas in 2018 and who obviously impressed Trump then but every military officer that I saw Trump with behaved with the greatest deference politeness professionalism it was it's it's

quite a performance you don't see in the political leaders who form our cabinets and they spoke with restraint they didn't think they were making the decision they were there to advise the president that's the job of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to be the president's principal military advisor. And I felt that in most cases he respected the individuals who were talking to him, but again felt uncomfortable about making decisions. When we did make decisions often following what I call the absolute Brent Scowcroft model of how a national security decision-making process should work, Trump would make a decision and in one case in particular made a decision to strike Iran after

they shot one of our drones down in international airspace over the Gulf. And they reversed himself the next day. And I told this story in my book and I remember Joe Dunford, who was chairman, said, I just wish the president would own his decisions. And that was a very powerful signal, I think, of how the military felt that when things went great, boy, that was fine. But when things weren't going great or he felt uncertain, it was somebody else's problem. And if he's awkward in the room with them, I take your point that they're deferential and

they're polite and obviously they're doing their jobs, is it awkward for them too? I mean, are they trying to sort of figure out his learning style so that they can sort of shoehorn the bits of information that they feel he needs? Well, they're trying to provide him with information they think president should have in front of him, and often he just didn't care about that or wasn't taking it on board or couldn't process it. You know, I'm not a shrink. I don't want to get into what was going through Trump's head, but it was a different experience than I've seen with any other American president, both the decisions that I participated in at lower levels in the government as I worked my way through the chairs or just reading about. And I think it's a problem. I think it's clear in the second term he feels more at ease making these decisions, but it doesn't mean he considers in any more detail or at any greater length or scope what exactly the implications are of what he's doing. And while I'm a strong supporter of the decision he has made with respect to Iran, I'm very worried he hasn't thought through the implications or laid the groundwork that a hopefully a normal decision-making process would have,

would have led him to do. So in the example you just gave us of him making a decision and then reversing himself the following day, was there an indication why he'd reversed himself? Reversing himself that evening after elements of the mission had been launched because a lawyer from the White House Counsel's Office ran in and told him that the casualty figures could be whatever they were, 100 plus, that were based on training manuals that the Iranian army had used, no indication that those level of casualties, those numbers of people would have actually been involved. It was a terrible breach of the protocol of decision-making for one person on his own

to go and say that after the full National Security Council, chaired by the president, had considered these questions, including the president, asking very specific questions about casualties. And that breakdown of the process, I think, has become much more in the second term where one person for the first time since Henry Kissinger is both the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State and where the National Security Council staff has been cut to levels as one person described at the levels that we had when color television was embedded. So the idea that we're not getting the kind of decision-making process that we need is very disturbing. The process does not guarantee the right decision, but the

absence of a process magnifies the risk that you're going to get a bad decision. Ambassador Bolton, what was the most effective way of getting Donald Trump's attention? I mean, did he respond to charts? Did he respond to clips from television news shows? I mean, did you ever walk away from a briefing with him thinking that went well? Well, from time to time, I think one thing we learned was you could have briefings that he would listen to and take in if they only had one point. So, for example, in preparation for his second meeting with Kim Jong-un in North Korea, I described this in my book as well, we wanted to reassure him that he could walk away from that meeting without a deal on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. and it would not be to his disadvantage or the countries. And he did understand that point, and he did walk away without a deal, which was the right outcome.

But what he would focus on or what he would take to be important was always a challenge to understand. So given what you know of him, do you think that he has the curiosity and the attention to detail to stay with what might turn out to be a lengthy engagement with Iran? Well, I think that's a big open question. Now, he has been saying this could go for four or five weeks or maybe even longer. So as of the time he makes that statement, he does appear to understand that it's not a matter of days. But he could change his mind on that in an instant and reverse himself, declare total victory, and stop. We just don't know. So I do think that Prime Minister Netanyahu was one of the people who was most successful in the first term in speaking with the president.

And I think only Shinzo Abe of Japan was better than Netanyahu in the first term. Although Boris Johnson came close during the time I was there at least, I think in the second term, Netanyahu is the most successful of any foreign leader. And if anybody has thought this through in excruciating detail, it is Netanyahu. So is that a good thing for the U.S. or not a good thing? So one of our allies has thought it through more carefully than we have. Does that mean that we're beholden to them? No, well, at least there are some people in the United States who have thought it through as thoroughly as Netanyahu has, and they're coming to the right conclusion.

Whether we have the patience and the persistence to stick to it, at this point remains unclear. I do think it's significant that Trump has acknowledged. It's not like the 12-day war where we bombed for exactly one day, did a remarkable job with our bunker busters against the nuclear program, did not obliterate it, as Trump later said, but did cause it, along with what the Israelis have already done, significant damage. So the distance between one day and four or five weeks for Trump is very considerable, and I think that, if he can stick with that, That alone is a step forward. But, you know, three weeks ago we were talking about Greenland.

Two weeks ago, we were talking about Minneapolis. Before that, there was Venezuela. Do you have any confidence he will be able to stick with it? I mean, this is a man who's able to change the narrative, you know, faster than most people can change their outfits. Yeah. Well, he has a short attention span, so it's always at risk. And as long as things are going successfully, he'll stick with it. If we run into real difficulty, and I hope we don't, and we shouldn't at this point,

but if we do, because anything is possible, that would be the testing time to see whether he was able to stick it out. I just, I mean, you might as well flip a coin as decide what he's going to do. Right. That's rather an alarming depiction, Ambassador. So, as you mentioned, they've taken your old role, National Security Advisor, wrapped it up with Secretary of State. What is the disadvantage of giving both those distinctly different jobs to one person, however capable that person turns out to be? What is the sort of internal conflict there? Well, if you go back to the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Defense Department,

merged the Army and the war and Navy departments, created an Air Force, created the CIA, the creation of the National Security Council was a recognition that the U.S. had entered into a much more complex world than we had lived in before World War II when the cabinet departments were largely autonomous and there was no coordination mechanism for the president to make these critical decisions. But Congress and President Truman recognized that we were in a very different world. So the whole NSC structure is designed to help the president make complex decisions in a complex and threatening environment. If you ignore that process, you're back pre-1939, and that's very dangerous. There has only been one time before when the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State were the same person, and that was when Henry Kissinger held it during the depths of Watergate and then into the Ford administration. And with all due respect to Marco, he's not Henry Kissinger. Neither is anybody else for matter, nor are we in the depths of Watergate now. And Gerald Ford came to realize that as

as incredible a person as Kissinger was, it was insufficient for him as president to have one person with those two jobs. Now, he nominated Brent Scowcroft to be the National Security Advisor who had been Kissinger's deputy, but Brent had his own personality and he did the job. And he then and what he served for George H.W. Bush later created the template on which every subsequent national security advisor has based the job, how the NSC process should work, what the national security advisor does versus what the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense do. And that has been obliterated. And I don't think it serves the President well to lose that process. Doesn't serve the country well. Trump doesn't seem to understand that. He thought I could do

the job. He told me this expressly with, you know, 10 or 12 people when I had a staff of about 350. I think the staff of any official can always be reduced. But the issue is how do you make sure the president has the right information, that he has the options that he can consider, and then how do you make sure afterward that the president's decisions are being carried out? And I think by essentially ignoring the NSC by gutting it, you're just eliminating all of those procedural aspects that are intended to help the president, not to shift decision-making power away from the president, intended to help the president. Those are not functioning now.

So that's an incredibly helpful potted history. Thank you. And I take your point that this is an apparatus set up to support the president's decision-making. not to make him feel less important. I mean, clearly the same thing has gone on in the diplomatic core too. And you have Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his old real estate and golfing buddy in Steve Whitkoff being sent out to lead negotiations with Iran. The negotiations obviously came to an end.

I mean, what do you think when you see those two setting off to do, as they say, a deal with Iran? I mean, can you sort of describe what you think the impact on American security is when you have two people who may well have a completely different approach, but also don't have any kind of history in terms of understanding the complexity of what they're doing? Well, you might as well have sent the bobsy twins to negotiate with Iran or negotiate with Russia over Ukraine. Their principal characteristic was they were loyal to Trump. And the main thing you need in national security decision making is judgment, judgment. You don't need knowledge, really, totally, but it helps occasionally. And they went without knowledge or judgment.

They went without knowledge or judgment. that's really kind of, well, that's unnerving coming from you. So what do you think Vladimir Putin is thinking as he was watching all this unfold? Well, I think Russia is about to lose an important surrogate in the Middle East if the Iranian regime falls. When the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown, they lost another ally there. They may lose their naval and air bases at Tardis and in a lot of key of problems. The province, same with the Chinese in terms of Iran. It's been an important supplier of oil contrary to our sanctions and something China has leaned on.

It's an energy-poor country. So this will be an enormous setback to Russia and China, and it reflects in Russia's case their bandwidth is overwhelmed by the war in Ukraine. They couldn't do anything about Syria. Essentially, they couldn't do anything about the capture of Maduro in Venezuela, or although regime change is not complete in Venezuela and notwithstanding whatever Trump thinks, the Chavistas are still in charge in Caracas and hoping to hang on. But the trend in the Middle East, if this regime falls, is decidedly against the interest of the Chinese and Russians. And they don't appear at this point to be able to do anything about it.

And we've seen no evidence after the attack began over the weekend that they've tried. So, in other words, this may be a good thing for weakening their position. Yes, although I don't think that figured into Trump's decision. I think if anything, because he's going to see his good friend Xi Jinping at the end of March beginning of April, it would have operated as a constraint. So I don't think the Russia or Chinese role here played a significant part of the decision. Okay. So one of the things that the Republicans traditionally have been very good at is messaging and everybody staying on message. We appear to have had several contradictory messages about why we are, why America decided to bomb Iran when it did. And the most recent of which was Donald Trump saying that we were about to have a nuclear war with Iran. Everything seems to have been ratcheted up as they try to explain it. How important is it for the military and for the joint chiefs to have the civilian government explaining why they are doing this.

Well, I think the military knows what they think their orders are. I don't think they pay that much attention. I think it's more the political effect of mixed messaging both for the American public that need to be sold on why this is in our national interest, which I think the case is overwhelming that it is, but it's not being made, how to deal with Congress, which is another political problem the same kind, different audience, different circumstances, but basically seeking to make the case that Congress should support the president. The same is true in the diplomatic area, where we've done next to no consultations. We want our allies to stand with us. And I will say I'm certainly grateful that Canada, Australia, New Zealand are. You see the pattern there. We could

be waiting for something from London, but from the Europeans, it's just crickets. So I think we would be in a stronger position if Trump had done this political homework and if they could keep their messaging together. I think they will have strong Republican support with just a few exceptions, apart from within the administration where there's a strong dissent coming from the MAGA elements that are isolationist, beginning with the vice president himself. So that's a problem Trump alone is capable of dealing with. I don't know what he will do, but it's a significant weakness internal to his own political base. So Secretary of Defense slash War, Pete Hegeseth has said that next week he'll be attending

a fundraiser in Iowa and, you know, he won't be in effect in the chair overseeing what's going on right now. Is that fairly unusual for a defense secretary? Yeah, I think certainly it's the job of the commander-in-chief to be on the bridge during a war, and I think that's the job of the Secretary of Defense to be there with him, to be able to assist and advise. You know, there are times when you conduct business as usual to deceive your adversaries, that's perfectly normal.

But to say we're going to treat this as if it's a normal time is a big mistake, and I think sends a very counterproductive signal inside the Defense Department. The president announced that we were going to be firing on Iran on Saturday when he just left a fundraiser at Mara Lago. There appears to be a temporary situation room set up there, which, you know, appears to be done with velvet curtains. And people have referred to perhaps comically online as his blanket fort. How secure can you make those sort of arrangements when you're doing something? like this. I think they were secure. I think it's a question of judgment. If going to Mara Lago was helpful in keeping the secret wrap around the beginning of the attack, then I don't mind that.

But I think after he announced that, he should have come directly back to Washington. And I think I may be old-fashioned here, but I grew up at a time when presidents sat behind their desk in the Oval Office and spoke to the nation at moments of crisis. And you knew when the president was making a speech from the Oval Office that it was something serious, that it was something he wanted his fellow countrymen to hear. And Trump hasn't done that. Neither did Biden do it very much. Neither did Obama. I think it's a mistake to lose that. That is a signal that this is serious and the country should take it seriously. People can agree or disagree. But I want to see a president that goes beyond tweets and posts on social media. He should address the country. He should do

it this week. Especially when American lives are at stake. That's really the most frequent time presidents speak to the nation. I remember Kennedy at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everybody remembers one or another of those speeches. They didn't necessarily persuade people, but that's the job of the president to do. It's not being done. Do you ever regret going to work for him? No, because I think somebody had to do the job, and I regret I wasn't more persuasive. I wish I'd persuaded him to do what he's done back when I was there. All right. Ambassador Bolton, thank you so much for your frank opinions and your incredible clarity in the way you declare them. Many, many thanks.

Well, glad to be with you. Thank you. I love talking to Ambassador Bolton because it's so unusual to find someone who will be that frank and who's actually been in the room with Donald Trump. And I also liked his frankness that he didn't regret going to work out. And I also like his frankness that he doesn't regret going to work for him, even though, of course, he's now facing his own indictment in a sort of political retribution from Donald Trump, where he's facing 18 different charges for disseminating classified information. Anyway, that case is ongoing and we weren't able to ask him about it because for legal reasons he can't talk about it. But I do find his analysis of how Trump learns and what

it's like being in the room, incredibly valuable. And as I said at the beginning, incredibly alarming. This is the man in charge of American lives in the Gulf. Anyway, if you have been, thank you very much for watching. Please leave us your comments. Don't forget to sign up for our Bee Beast tier level of membership. And I also wanted to promote myself with my new substack. This week, I'm actually writing about why was

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