The Daily - John Bolton Is Fired. Or Did He Resign?

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

John Bolton, the national security adviser, was ousted after fundamental disputes with President Trump over how to handle foreign policy challenges like Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. But the two men disagreed about how they parted ways. Guest: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:President Trump said he fired John Bolton; Mr. Bolton insisted that he had resigned. Regardless, they had a fundamental disagreement over foreign policy, most recently Afghanistan.Mr. Trump is now looking for the fourth national security adviser of his presidency. Here is a short list of possibilities.

Hello? Hey, Peter. It's Michael Barbaro. Hey, how are you? Good, good, good. I imagine I'm catching you absolutely in the thick of it. Yes. Just how in the thick of it? We're, like, crashing. What's going on? Okay, we saw the president's tweet about John Bolton being out as national security advisor,

and I wonder if I could just ask you a few questions about it, or is now just not a good time? Yeah, I think it would be better not to. Okay. Is that all right? Sorry. Yes. We'll talk in a little bit. Okay, thanks. Okay, bye. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, Peter Baker eventually takes the call and explains what happened to John Bolton. It's Wednesday, September 11th. Peter. Hello.

Hi. Hi there. How are you? What a difference a day makes. Little 24 hours. It's another day in crazy town, as John Kelly would call it. Right, John Kelly. Him. So, yesterday, Peter, you were telling us that President Trump was calling off a peace deal with the Taliban, which is exactly what his national security advisor, John Bolton, was pushing for.

And that felt like a John Bolton win. Now, today, Bolton has either been fired or he quit, depending on who you believe. So, how do you square those two? Well, sometimes you can win a policy fight and lose the war, right? In this case, Bolton did get what he wanted in terms of ending the negotiations, at least for now, with the Taliban. But he had so worn down his relationship with the president that by less than 24 hours later, he's out of a job. Welcome to The Late Show. I'm your host, Stephen Colbert. After we talked yesterday, there was a confrontation between the president and Bolton over this very topic. Donald Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David the weekend before 9-11.

That's like, there's nothing that's like that. People in Vice President Mike Pence's camp were upset at Bolton because of a story. Both Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton thought it was a mistake. That had come out saying that Pence had also been against the Camp David meeting with the Taliban. That was perceived by Pence's people as a way from Bolton's camp to basically enlist allies to say, hey, it wasn't just him. But according to people familiar with the talks, Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be. They deeply resented that. That was blamed on Bolton, fairly or not. And so by the time the president talked with Bolton last night, feelings were really raw. Right, because Bolton had opposed the Camp David meeting.

And so the thinking is that Bolton would have been the one, or people around him, to get the word out that, oh, I'm not alone. Look, even the vice president opposed this meeting. Exactly. And for months, the president had been kind of bristling at what he perceived to be John Bolton's overly hawkish view of the world. John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. It's up to him. He'd take on the whole world at one time, okay? You know, he would even joke about that. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing, isn't it? He was the peacemaker among the two. Nobody thought that was going to happen. I'm the one that tempers him, but that's okay.

I have different sides. I mean, I have John Bolton, and I have other people that are a little more dovish than him. And in some ways, that was true, because Bolton didn't like a lot of this diplomacy that was going on. He didn't like dealing with the North Koreans or the Iranians or the Taliban. He didn't trust any of them. He didn't think that the United States should get in bed with these bad actors. Yeah, here's an all-purpose insult that you can use. I'll apply it to the North Koreans. Question, how do you know when the North Korean regime is lying? Answer, when their lips are moving. Whereas the president, as you know,

is somebody who's looking for the big deal. He's going to make a deal with the Taliban. Maybe he'll make a deal with Iran. Again, I think Iran has tremendous economic potential. And I look forward to letting them get back to the stage where they can show that. And that was at the core of the very big differences between him and his national security advisor. So what happens this morning? Well, the morning begins actually kind of normal in the White House. There was a meeting of the national security team in the Situation Room.

It was chaired by John Bolton, as it should normally be without the president. A couple hours later, the White House scheduled a briefing that Bolton was going to give in the White House briefing room to the press, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin, to talk about terrorism efforts. Then... Dramatic breaking news just as we begin the hour. The President of the United States announcing on Twitter his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, is leaving.

Right around noon comes the tweet from the President. See the tweet from the president right there? I asked for John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new national security advisor this week. Within minutes, though, comes another tweet. In a surreal moment 12 minutes later. This one from John Bolton.

Bolton denied he was fired, tweeting, I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, let's talk tomorrow. He's saying that he offered his resignation and that the president had accepted. In other words, it was his idea, not the president. So I went ahead and texted him just to make sure we were understanding that he was giving us a different version. He was disputing the president. You texted John Bolton. I texted John Bolton on his phone, and he texted back, offered last night without his asking, slept on it, and gave it to him this morning. So John Bolton is disputing the version that the president gave.

He's saying it's not true. And Peter, what happens to that press conference where Bolton was supposed to talk? Well, they still had the briefing. Hello, everybody. So Secretary Pompeo and I are here today to talk about the president's new executive order. With Pompeo and Mnuchin, the secretaries of state and treasury, and they're there to talk about... Fighting global terrorism. You know, terrorism financing and how they're planning to be tougher on terrorism as we

head the anniversary of 9-11. At this time, Secretary Mnuchin, I'm happy to take a couple questions on this topic. But of course, everybody in the room wants to ask about... Did John Bolton get fired or did he quit? What happened to Bolton? And what the backstory is, of course, is that Pompeo and Bolton have been at odds for months. They have been in this epic feud over basically the era of the president. They share some of the same policy views.

They're both, you know, pretty hawkish conservatives. But Pompeo has done more to stay within the president's good graces, I would say, than John Bolton. Yes, ma'am, in the back. Go ahead, Terry. Did he leave the White House because he disagreed with you in particular over talks with the Taliban? So we asked Pompeo about this in the briefing room. I'll leave to the president to talk about the reasons he made the decision. But I would say this.

The president's entitled to the staff that he wants. And I had to say there were no tears shed on his part for John Bolton. He said, look, the president deserved to have somebody he trusts and values. There were many times Ambassador Bolton and I disagreed, that's to be sure. And he very openly said, look, I had a lot of disagreements. So he wasn't trying to even pretend that they didn't have a rivalry. There were definitely places that Ambassador and I had different views about how we should proceed.

At one point, they were asked, Were you two blindsided by what occurred today? They blindsided by this, and both of them grinned. I'm never surprised. And Pompeo said, I'm not surprised by anything. I'm never surprised, he said. And I don't mean that on just this issue. And I think Secretary Mnuchin would say the same thing.

If Pompeo and Bolton are both hawks, help me understand what a difference might look like for them. For example, how did Bolton handle Afghanistan and the Taliban talks versus Pompeo? Well, that's one area where they were at odds. Pompeo was more favorable toward the talks because he knew the president was for it. In other words, if he were left to his own devices, it might not be his particular choice. But Pompeo was more willing to subordinate his views to his president's. And that was a lesson he learned from Rex Tillerson, who didn't do that, the first secretary of state, and then getting fired as a result.

Bolton, in some ways, was policy-wise very different than Rex Tillerson. But in terms of not simply going along to get along, he was less willing to simply go along with policy ideas that he didn't favor. Where he probably went crosswise is that the president and his people value loyalty, and they never quite accepted Bolton as a member of the team. Does all of that, in the end, kind of suggest to you that despite this dispute over exactly what happened, no, I wasn't fired, I resigned. No, I fired you. Like, that in the end, it sounds like it was Trump who pushed out Bolton. Well, look, I mean, the relationship was broken. It was inevitable that this was going to happen. Whether it was inevitable to happen today or some other

day, it doesn't really matter that much because we knew that he overstayed his welcome. In other words, he was no longer really going to be welcome in that White House. We'll be right back. So, Peter, I guess the question here is, why hire a national security advisor who is so fundamentally different from you on the issue of national security? Well, that's a great question. What President Trump liked about John Bolton. Joining me right now, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Ambassador John Bolton. Good to see you, Ambassador. Was seeing him on Fox News and very aggressively, you know,

articulating a conservative point of view. People have talked about closing this border for a long time. I was in the Reagan administration when we passed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, one of which was close the borders. He thought that Bolton was kind of a like-minded, pugilistic version of a political figure. They do share some things. This idea of America first does play into John Bolton's philosophy as well. He describes himself as an American nationalist.

He's not all that thrilled with the allies, neither is President Trump. He doesn't really believe in the U.N. or a lot of these international organizations, doesn't think that they're very effective or that the United States should be subordinating itself to them, neither does President Trump. What he missed was that Bolton's view is very different than his own view, than President Trump's view on a lot of these big issues. On North Korea, where President Trump wanted to negotiate with Kim Jong-un, and John Bolton thought that was probably unwise.

There's not a lot of time to waste here. Talking to the North Koreans is a waste of time. On Iran. How long would it take for Iran to get a deliverable nuclear weapon? Roughly one day after North Korea gets it. Where just a couple months ago, John Bolton teed up a retaliatory strike for the downing of an American surveillance drone. Right. And the president pulled it back at the last minute, right?

On Russia, John Bolton much, much tougher, much more skeptical of Vladimir Putin's Russia than the president would never invite them back into the G7 the way the president has talked about. And finally, of course, these last few days we see highlighted in this very big, dramatic way. — There's no blind trust in the Taliban in this administration, that's for sure. — The idea of negotiating with the Taliban. — Peter, it seems like Bolton did ultimately have an outsized influence. negotiating with the Taliban. Peter, it seems like Bolton did ultimately have an outsized influence over these huge foreign policy issues that you

just outlined. He wanted the U.S. to be out of the Iran nuclear deal. The U.S. is now out. He opposed peace talks with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Those talks have more or less stalled, right? He opposed the peace deal with the Taliban.

The president just said, those are over. Not bad. Yeah, in some ways, that's true, obviously, but it depends on the issue, on Iran, for instance. And I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, no nuclear weapons. We have enough problems in this world right now with nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons for Iran. And I think we'll make a deal.

He was pushing on an open door. The president agreed with John Bolton's view of the Iran nuclear deal. They both thought it was a terrible idea that it was giving Iran too much leeway and that they should get out. So they agreed on that. But they didn't agree on, for instance, regime change. That's something that Bolton has always favored in Iran. The president has now publicly said several times, I'm not for regime change. These are great people. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership. We're not looking for regime change. I just want to make that clear. We're looking for no nuclear weapons. If you look on North Korea, you're right. The talks are stalled.

That certainly pleased John Bolton because he thought that they're counterproductive and dangerous, but it probably wasn't because of him. It was really more because of Kim not coming to the table with anything meaningful. So in a lot of ways, John Bolton did have a lot of influence. He particularly helped, for instance, pull the United States out of some treaties like the INF Treaty with Russia. But his successes were in areas where he was working with the president's own instinct, where he was going in the same direction. Where he got in trouble was where he was fighting against the tide. I'm struck by the fact that the thing you say the president liked most about Bolton, his pugilism, his combative style, is also kind of what cost

Bolton his job, right? Yeah. I mean, and this was something that people said even 17 months ago when he was hired. You know, when he was hired, people said, well, I don't know, I put those two in a room. The inevitable clash is going to eventually drive them apart. To some people, what's actually surprising is that it took this long. But he viewed his job as how to stop bad deals from happening.

In fact, within minutes of his resigning, I talked with a person who's close to Bolton and said, look, for the 17 months that John Bolton was national security advisor, there were no bad deals. That's his view. And, you know, we've seen this before where people who surround the president view their job as stopping the president from doing things that they consider to be bad, right? In Rex Tillerson's case, for instance, it was the other way around. He wanted to stop the president from being too combative in the world. John Bolton wanted to stop the president from being too naive in his view, too willing to get in bed with bad actors who can't be trusted.

In both cases, it didn't end up well. So Bolton is leaving with all these same foreign policy matters largely unresolved, which is, I guess, a problem for the next national security advisor. So what do you think ends up happening next? And what can you tell us about who you suspect the president will choose for that job and what it will tell us about how he's thinking about those issues? Right, exactly. I mean, the president said today that he will name somebody next week. Now, it suggests he has perhaps somebody in mind. And one of the names, for instance, we've heard is a guy named Steve Biegun.

Steve Biegun is a former George W. Bush administration official who has been President Trump's chief negotiator with the North Koreans. I fully understand the importance of this job. The issues are tough, and they will be tough to resolve. But the president has created an opening, and it's one that we must take by seizing every possible opportunity to realize the vision for a peaceful future for the people of North Korea. That would seem to tell you, if he picks Biegun, that he's looking for somebody on the opposite side of Bolton when it comes to some of these diplomacy issues, somebody who's willing to talk with some of these bad actors in order to try to negotiate some sort of agreement. On the other hand, if he picks a different figure, somebody who's more hard-lined like John Bolton, maybe you'll see that the policies won't change and the question really would

be more about personality and fit and chemistry. So we're looking to see who the choice is because I think it will be telling in figuring out where the president will go in this next year before re-election. So, Peter, finally, what are you thinking about on this fine afternoon, besides the fact that The Daily calls you all the time now? Well, this is a really interesting moment in foreign policy because we do have all these balls up in the air. We can't tell whether or not any of them are going to come to fruition or not, right? The president is talking with or talking about talking with North Korea, Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Literally some of our greatest adversaries in history. Biggest enemies, greatest adversaries. If he were to pull off what he wanted to pull off, it would reshape the world and America's place in it. But, and there's a big but, none of these are guaranteed. These are all super hard, super entrenched disputes that have gone through many, many presidencies before without being resolved. And so he has set himself up for either a big win or a big loss, depending on how it turns out over these months to come. on how it turns out over these months to come. I get the sense that John Bolton would like to tell the story of what really happened,

and I hope you will then share it with us. I'm looking forward to sitting down with him and hearing his story. We'll talk to you then. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Today I inform my intention with the establishment of the next government to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and North Dead Sea. In a speech on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that if re-elected next week,

he would annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank. So I speak to you, citizens of the State of Israel, for the sake of future generations and future generations, give me the power to guarantee Israel's security, give me the power to determine Israel's borders. Thank you very much. Netanyahu, who failed to create a governing coalition after his last election, prompting a new one on September 17,

said he would take over the territory in the name of Israeli security and with what he described as the approval of the Trump administration. But the move was widely seen as a last-minute appeal to right-wing voters that would reduce any future Palestinian state to a small area encircled by Israel. And later today, congressional Democrats plan to introduce gun safety legislation that would make it easier for police

to take away guns from those deemed dangerous, bar gun purchases by people convicted of hate crimes, and ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The bills, crafted in the wake of the latest mass shootings, could pass in the democratically controlled House, but face significant opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.