The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Fires National Security Adviser John Bolton

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

Bolton was Trump's third national security adviser and continued the pattern of departures by advisers who proved a bad fit for a White House led by the rare president with no prior experience with the military, national security or elected office. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Chris in Grand Junction, Colorado, where I am painting a topographic mural. I live in Boulder, but because of this great art opportunity, I'm going to miss the live show next week. So please come back to Colorado soon. We're going to have a hot Senate race next year. This podcast was recorded at... It is 143 Eastern on Tuesday, September 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. To keep up with all the changing news, listen to NPR on your local radio station. Like my favorite, KUNC.

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I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And President Trump's national security advisor is out. As with most firings or resignations, the world learned via a tweet President Trump posting, I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the administration. And therefore, I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning.

Why does this matter? Well, it matters maybe because it gives us a little insight into where Donald Trump is on his foreign policy. He styles himself as a tough guy, but also he's an isolationist in some ways. He wants to pull back from foreign interventions. We know that John Bolton was a hawk, has always been one, and was willing to insert and assert American force in places where he felt it could change things. Franco, Mara just referred to Bolton as a hawk. Can you explain his philosophical view of the world and how he fit into the Trump White House?

I can certainly try. I mean, President Trump is someone who has said that he does not want to go to war. But John Bolton is probably one of the most aggressive, as Mara said, hawkish voices in the administration and has openly, particularly before he took the administration, spoken about regime change in several different countries. Using military force in Iran and North Korea, places that would lead to massive wars if that happened. Exactly. And that is exactly something that President Trump, despite his aggressive talk, he has said he does not want to go to war. And he's even joked that if it was up to John Bolton, we'd be in probably four wars. And we're mostly going to talk about the policy implications here and what this means, if anything, for the way that the U.S. interacts with the rest of the world. But I feel like we do have to note that this is the latest in a long line of people who come into the Trump administration and end up leaving in kind of an embarrassing way, getting kicked out the door, often finding out their services are no longer needed via tweet. Except for in this case, since both Bolton and Trump are tweeting, Bolton said he offered his resignation last night and Trump said, we'll discuss it tomorrow. And then when Trump fired him by tweet, John Bolton responded in tweets and texts saying, hey, no, I resigned.

Including some moments like this on Fox News. John Bolton just texted me just now. He's watching. Can you read it? Yeah. He said, let's be clear. I resigned. And I said, do you mind if I say that while you were talking? And he wrote, yes. So John Bolton has just told me, texted me to said, I resigned. Wait, he minded that he said that? I think he said it was okay. I think he must have meant it's okay. You know, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis takes one extreme approach of not talking at all about what happened. John Bolton seems in the early hours of this to be taking another route. Yeah, John Bolton's not someone who's going to be shy.

He is someone who's going to speak out. He could be on Fox News, his old stomping grounds, at any moment speaking out. And I would not be surprised at all if he is. And don't forget, John Bolton was not climbing the greasy pole. He was not at the White House to further his career. He was at the White House to further his deeply held beliefs about how American power should be asserted around the world. So let's walk through several situations that the White House was dealing with while Bolton was in his position and how Bolton's worldview, you know, happened or didn't happen in terms of the decisions made. And I think we should obviously start with Afghanistan over the weekend, President Trump shocking people in both

parties and most foreign policy experts saying that the discussions with the Taliban about withdrawing U.S. troops had reached the point where the Taliban had been invited to come to Camp David before President Trump called off the talks. What was Bolton's view of those conversations about scaling back American presence in Afghanistan? Well, John Bolton was reportedly against these talks. He was against bringing the Taliban in to the United States to meet in Camp David. So this was something that was concerned. He had a differing view, according to my sources, than Pompeo, who supported it. They went back and forth. And in the end, you know, in a way, Bolton won because of it, but it was because of the attack. At least that's what the administration is saying. Well, the other thing is John Bolton

was against talking to the Taliban, period. He was against the peace negotiations that the president had authorized and that had been going on for many, many months in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And the president pulled the plug on those two. He didn't just call off this meeting. And so in an ironic way, John Bolton won the last battle, but lost the bigger war. And just one other thing about Pompeo, many people were against Donald Trump bringing the Taliban, many people were against bringing the Taliban to Camp David, including Republicans. Pompeo didn't necessarily think it was a good idea. What he's famous for is doing a kind of mind meld with Trump, trying to figure out where Trump wants to go and hanging on and being there with him. Yeah, there's no question there were a lot of people who were surprised that Pompeo was

supportive of this. That was the most recent policy back and forth that Bolton was involved in. But if he kind of got his way in Afghanistan, even if it led to him getting ousted, he really didn't get his way in North Korea, right? I mean, this is someone when he was appointed National Security Advisor, one of the things a lot of people look to was his previous advocacy for regime change in North Korea and even advocating using military force, which is something most experts say would agree to tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths on the peninsula. those talks, the president, as he always says, I like meetings. The president likes to televise the talks with Kim Jong-un and President Trump. The president likes to have a televised spectacle. He's meeting one-on-one with an adversary, another foreign leader. He really wants that. John Bolton thought there was no profit in meeting with the North Korean leader. So far, nothing's come of those talks, but they went forward anyway.

Yeah. I mean, North Korea is a great example to bring up because it really kind of, in a way, defined the differences between John Bolton and President Trump. You know, President Trump had all those telltale signs that he usually does before he pushes someone out the door. And North Korea was one of those because he sent John Bolton to Mongolia during this summit with the North Korean leader. So John Bolton was not even there for that historic moment. Can we just say something about him being sent to Mongolia? For those listeners who maybe are younger, sending someone to Mongolia or to outer Mongolia used to be a phrase when you wanted them to go as far as possible away from you. And this is not a figure of speech. I'm going to send you to outer Mongolia. And this was not a figure of speech. He actually sent him to Mongolia. It's

like a line in a Mel Brooks movie. So let's walk through a couple more hot spots that the Trump administration is currently figuring out how to deal with. One of them is Iran. How did Bolton see the region and what is the prevailing view, if any, in the administration right now? Iran is another one of those very big issues where Bolton kind of cut his teeth and in the end really came at ends with the president. You know, as again, like we said, President Trump doesn't want to go to war and National Security Advisor Bolton, you know, continued to kind of escalate this. It was after some of these provocations by

Iran that Bolton looked to the Pentagon and started asking for potential plans to send thousands and thousands of troops to the Middle East. But, you know, remember, when John Bolton came into this position, he was asked over and over again in every interview, you are on the record for decades being a hawk on Iran, advocating for regime change. Now you're in the White House. And he would say over and over again, I'm not the decider in chief. The president makes the decisions. I'm just there to give him my best advice. But obviously, I mean, but he obviously did not let those things go, of course. I mean, it was before when he was with Bush, he advocated for regime change in Iran. And just to, you know, kind of add to this kind of hawkish thing,

he was part of the Bush administration who discussed Iraq's chemical, alleged chemical agents that kind of helped lead the United States into war in Iraq. I mean, he's just got this reputation. And of course, there was none. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk more broadly about what, if anything, this change means for the president's foreign policy going forward. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developing solutions to support strong families and communities to help ensure a brighter future for America's children.

More information is available at aecf.org. There is no way of getting around it. College is really expensive. She was like, I have to go here. I'm just going gonna die if I don't go. And then we looked at the cost. I said, well, you just gonna have to die. But there are strategies to help ease the burden. Check out LifeKit's new episode from NPR on saving for college by subscribing to LifeKit All Guides. We're back. Mara, this question's for you. You early on talked about a collection of Trump advisors, Mattis, H.R. McMaster, the second national security advisor after Michael Flynn infamously lasted a matter of weeks, few others. It's kind of the guardrails of the administration, right? So the president didn't really listen to his guardrails. He pushed them out of his administration.

One by one. Then you had hawks like Bolton come in and he seems to not be listening to them and pushing them out either. Well, he said pretty clearly when asked, what did your advisor say to you the other day, Mr. President? He said, oh, for advisors, I listen to my own advice. He doesn't like the image of having advisors. Part of his persona is that he makes all the decisions himself. He's kind of a party of one. I think what it means that Bolton is gone is there's probably going to be less division inside the White House and the

administration because Donald Trump will be more and more solo in decision making. Either there'll be people who try to get on his wavelength, figure out where he's going and jump on board. You know, there's two models for a national security advisor. One is kind of a coordinator. They don't have a dog in this fight. They don't have strong views. They just try to get all the best advice from the Pentagon, the State Department, et cetera, put it together and present it to the president. The wonky term for this is the honest broker approach. Yes, the honest broker approach. Then there's the Bolton approach. Bolton has very strong views. He's had them for decades. And he clearly, even though the president was the decider in chief, as he always said, he was pushing his own agenda. I think the one exception to that for the moment, and as we've seen over and over again, that you can be in this position of being listened to and

very quickly not in that position, is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, somebody who has continually risen in the ranks of the Trump administration, seems to be a close advisor. The president listens to how much influence does he have now and has that changed with Bolton now? Well, this could certainly clear a lane for Pompeo. You know, Pompeo and Bolton have had their differences on policy matters such as North Korea. They've gone toe to toe and there's been a lot of documentation of those battles. Now Pompeo could have a clear role. We shall see, of course, depending on who the new person is. The president has announced

a new acting national security advisor, a protege of Bolton, Charles Kupperman, but he's not likely to last very long. The president said he'll have a new advisor next week. So there's a lot to see, and depending on who that person is, you would probably imagine that they would likely have a better relationship working with the Secretary of State. That is it for today. We are going to have our weekly roundup a day early tomorrow, and that's, of course, because the debate is Thursday.

We will be potting once the debate is done. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.