Today, Explained - John Boltin'

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

John Bolton is out. Vox’s Alex Ward explains why he was at odds with his boss from Day 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this episode of Today Explained comes from KiwiCo. You may remember them as the people who send projects to kids of all ages to help spark creativity, tinkering, and learning about science and technology and engineering and art and math. You can try them out for free right now at KiwiCo.com slash explained. Alex Ward, National Security Vox. What happened to John Bolton, National Security White House? He's gone. Just like that. Adios, Bolton. But this time, the controversy immediately landed on Fox News, where Bolton was like live texting over it.

Was it Fox and Friends? I'm not sure what the other shows are. It was the Brian Kilmeade. John Bolton just texted me. Oh. 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 say, I resigned. You basically have Trump saying, like, I asked for Bolton's resignation last night. The president also tweeting, quote, I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the administration. You have Bolton saying. Ambassador Bolton tweeted this just moments ago. I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, let's talk about it tomorrow.

So there's that controversy. The end result is the same. John Bolton, the third national security advisor for Donald Trump, is no longer the third national security advisor for Donald Trump. Do we have any idea why President Trump and his national security advisor have now parted ways? These two guys don't really agree on anything. Trump is not a dove in any way. But the one thing he does not want to do, and he seems completely allergic to, is being a president who starts a new war, whether it be with Iran, with Syria, with Venezuela, whoever may be,

he will threaten it. We've heard him say it constantly. But he always just seems when the moment comes to push back from that. John Bolton hasn't found a conflict. He doesn't want to start a war. He's written openly even before he joined the administration about bombing North Korea, Iran. And so while they both, I would say, have hawkish tendencies, they both like speaking tough and using American power abroad, they seem to have a pretty big separation when it comes to go to war or not. He has strong views on things, but that's okay. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing, isn't it? Okay, so that's been their relationship since the jump.

But this is coming, what, just a few days after this totally bungled Camp David summit where President Trump was supposed to host the leaders of Afghanistan and the Taliban. Does that have something to do with this, too? It definitely could. Bolton had been sidelined from major meetings leading up to that planned summit that never really materialized. Because he didn't want to do it? Because Bolton doesn't want to make a deal with the Taliban. In fact, one of the secrets we kind of heard over time was that it was a purposeful decision to keep Bolton out of that process. And basically, so it wouldn't leak. Like you could imagine, Bolton is a DC insider through and through. He knows how to play this game. And so there was

a concern that if this had leaked to Bolton, that there was going to be a Taliban-Afghan-U.S. meeting at Camp David, that that definitely would have leaked to the press and that may have scuttled it. So the fact that it didn't, right, we kind of heard about it through Trump's tweet, it showed that the national security advisor, the president's main aid when it comes to dealing with national security and foreign policy affairs, was left out of a massive national security and foreign policy issue. If this was a bad match from day one, why did these two people elect to work with each other? I think from Trump's end, it was that John Bolton is a respected GOP national security figure. He's been around forever. He's basically served in every Republican administration going back to Reagan, if I recall. And on top of that, he spoke tough on Fox News and Trump liked that about him. The Obama era for American foreign policy is clearly over. I thought this strike ordered by the president was very measured, very precise. Right. He would defend some of Trump's policies, some of his more hawkish tendencies. And so

you had someone who, at least on the hawkkish end matched with Trump minus that war part. On Bolton's end, that job was by far the highest he would ever get to government. I mean for those that don't know, the national security advisor position is an insanely important and powerful position. I mean it is equivalent in a sense to secretary of state and secretary of defense. Not necessarily saying that they are equivalent, right? National security advisor is not Senate confirmed. But the point is that like, this is the person who runs the day-to-day foreign policy for the president, main advisor in the presidency or every day, coordinates national security policy across

the sprawling government. And I think he knew that he and Trump matched temperamentally, I think. They did not match in terms of going the full extent on some issues. So despite being at loggerheads with the president the entire time, was he able to get anything done? Oh, yeah. I mean, despite, you know, having trouble pushing on some of the big ticket items that he wanted to work on, he definitely did a lot of things kind of outside of Trump's view that,

you know, led him to live his best life. Like what? Three things come to mind, especially. The first is he, even before joining the Trump administration, was strongly against arms control, meaning like, you know, deals to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and missiles and stuff. Like the INF with Russia? Like the INF with Russia. That's gone. It looks like new start. Another important U.S.-Russia deal may be out the window. And I reported at the time when Bolton went over to Moscow to negotiate with Putin and others that like he was carrying a, hey, can we work out a deal message? But that internally and telling aides like he just did not at all want to do that.

He wanted those deals done or gone rather. And now they're gone. What else? Two is he like totally dismantled any adherence the U.S. really had to international law and the U.N. Like the Human Rights Council, you know, is an important body for many reasons that many, that I should say people find controversial, but like the U.S. stopped adhering to that. U.N. defunding. The International Criminal Court wanted to look into the conduct of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Bolton basically bullied them to not doing so and even revoked the visa of one of their counselors. And the third thing? He's not the only one responsible for this, but he was a

major driving force in the American pressure campaign against Latin America, specifically Cuba, Nicaragua, and of course, Venezuela. Bolton kind of used these issues to say like it is America's job to push back against autocratic socialist regimes or communist regimes. And he even said like the Monroe Doctrine is back like with the Trump administration. So the U.S. would have complete control in a sense or complete power over the Western Hemisphere. And in fact, there's some reporting out there that like Bolton and others sold in the case of Venezuela, the Maduro's ouster, like it would be so much easier. And since it's taken so long, Trump has completely lost interest, but Bolton didn't. And so despite the fact that he may not have completed all the things he would

have liked to have done, he didn't convince Trump to do all the things he would have wanted him to do. In the end, Bolton accomplished a lot in his short time there. This isn't the first time he's been asked to leave an administration, right? Wasn't his exit from the George W. Bush administration sort of similar? It wasn't by tweet. Bolton has rubbed people the wrong way in the past. He was the U.N. ambassador for George W. Bush. He left in part because, you know, he didn't really like the UN. He went there basically to trash the UN. He had once famously said, like, you could lop off a lot of the top rows of the UN and it would still

be fine. And so where Bolton has gone, Bolton has just been himself and he's never really molded himself into an administration. He's been an ideologue forever. He's had a lot of opinions about arms control, Iran, Latin America, communism, socialism. Like he's just been constantly sort of single-minded about many of these things. And he's just pursued those objectives wherever he was. In this case with Donald Trump, he had a president who had strong views on foreign policy but didn't really deal with the day-to-day issues, didn't really follow through, is not a task manager, is not a thorough person. And so Bolton had a lot of room to pursue a lot of his objectives. Is this sort of the end of his political career? Does he have to just go back to being a Fox News talking head now?

That's the belief, is that this is it for John Bolton. And it's part of the reason, again, why he took the Trump job. It's because that's the highest he'll ever go. The chance that he'll ever be Senate confirmed seems impossible because Democrats hate him and a lot of Republicans hate him too. But we have not heard the last of John Bolton. This guy is going to be commenting constantly. He'll be writing op-eds. He'll be on TV.

Unlike Mattis, who wants to stay quiet, Bolton, I'm very sure, is going to be extremely loud. And I think maybe the first real insight we may get to how Trump is as president may come from John Bolton. John Bolton was President Trump's third national security advisor. Is the revolving door starting to hurt our national security? That's in a minute. Okay, so I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but now it's September, so it feels much more real. Halloween is coming. It's just a month and some away. I was talking to my neighbor this weekend. He's already got Halloween costume ideas for his kids. KiwiCo has costume ideas for your kids. But they'll actually go one step further and help your kids make their own costumes.

Your kid can be a KiwiCo unicorn, a KiwiCo dinosaur, a KiwiCo UFO. Very timely with all the Area 51 stuff going on right now. If the kid in your life isn't into dressing up, KiwiCo has other Halloween ideas. You can make a pac-man inspired glowing ghost and they have a glow-in-the-dark flower project that looks kind of creepy and then best of all a spider launcher guys kiwi co's got all sorts of fun for kids of all ages and you can try it out right now for free at kiwico.com slash explain Okay, Alex, National Security Advisor, hugely important job. The Trump administration has had three in not even as many years yet.

What does this mean for the nation's foreign policy? Here's what I think it means, and I don't know if you might see this as a good or bad thing. But Donald Trump is firmly in control of his foreign policy. Period. I don't know. I don't know what to think of that. What do you mean? Let me put it this way. If you were worried that John Bolton was going to

lead Trump into wars with Iran and North Korea and elsewhere, he didn't lead Trump into wars with Iran and North Korea and elsewhere. He did help increase the pressure on these countries, on North Korea, on Iran, on Venezuela. You may remember that we are backing effectively a coup attempt against Maduro. That's part of Bolton's policy. But if we also look at sort of the grand picture here, Trump's foreign policy did not change with Bolton in the White House. And so regardless, I think, of who Trump picks to replace Bolton, like there will be more continuity than change. Let's dig into some of these major conflicts that are, you know, still unresolved. I mean, where are we with North Korea now that Bolton's gone?

Well, let's recall that part of the reason, not fully, but part of the reason that the U.S. and North Korea do not have a deal is because of John Bolton. Pretty soon after Bolton joined the administration, he went on a Sunday news show and he said that, Will President Trump insist that Kim give up, ship out all of his nuclear weapons, all of his nuclear fuel, all of his ballistic missiles before the U.S. makes any concessions. Yeah, I think that's what denuclearization means. And we have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004. Well, North Korea does not like that. They saw what happened to Gaddafi after he gave up his nuclear weapons. And I don't think Kim Jong-un wants that fate. So you could give Bolton marks for making it harder for the U.S. and North Korea to sign a deal, but he did not succeed in getting Trump to abandon that diplomatic process.

What about Iran? So Bolton joined in April 2018, and then in May 2018, the U.S. left the Iran nuclear deal. And that was something that Bolton wanted ripped up, and Trump did too. So they were simpatico on that. But where I think Bolton definitely would have pushed Trump is, hey, maybe if we bomb certain parts of their nuclear program, maybe if we use more force, this might be another way to get Iran to that negotiating table that you want. Trump was like, I just want them to do a better deal. I don't want them to have nuclear weapons ever. I don't want them to support terrorists ever. I don't want them to test missiles ever. And Bolton supported all of that, but also supported

regime change. And it doesn't seem like Trump did. So the basic sort of tagline for Bolton is like he and Trump aligned on a lot, but he always wanted to go further than Trump. And that's where I think Bolton rubbed Trump the wrong way. And Afghanistan? Bolton is incredibly skeptical of doing any sort of deal with America's adversaries, right? Whether it be Iran, whether it be Maduro, whether it be North Korea or whether it be, in this case, the Taliban. And so the notion that Trump was not only going to sign a peace deal with the Taliban that had recently been killing American troops and has just been increasing its attacks to bring them to Camp David. Right. Kind of a sacred ground, not only for American foreign policy, but just the presidency in general. So close to September 11th. I'm sure Bolton hated that.

And in fact, he hated the single move dramatically reduces the chances of a new catastrophic war in the Middle East. Bolton's always been hawkish. He's always been skeptical of the UN. Did like the international order breathe some kind of sigh of relief today? I think to a certain extent, but I think you can look at this two ways. Way one is the most hawkish person ever to be in Trump's orbit is gone and left before convincing the president to launch a catastrophic war. You can consider that a win. Which war was that again? That's North Korea?

And Iran. OK. And another way to look at it is that one of the most able people that Trump has had in his administration, arguably the most able, the most D.C. savvy, the most knowledgeable about a lot of these issues. You may disagree with his views, but he's very knowledgeable about a lot of these issues. He's gone. And Trump is instead going to replace someone who would at least challenge Trump's instincts with someone who's more likely to be sycophantic and someone who's more likely to just agree with him.

And so you now are going to have kind of more Trump in your foreign policy. Now, you may think that's better than not having Bolton there. And I think that's a fair take. But you need to know that Bolton has tons of relationships with people around the world. He is liked by a lot of people around the world. He's an able DC insider. That's a loss for this administration that is still somewhat devoid of experience. And is that the way to survive in this administration? At this point, I suppose it's worth asking, how do you remain in this administration if you have views that oppose President Trump's? and what he's done, especially since taking the top diplomat job, is just side with Trump on everything. He may offer some thoughts behind closed doors, but at the end of the day, like in public, a staunch defender of Trump,

a staunch defender of his policies. What Trump likes is the spectacle of I am the leader and I have these guys defending me at all times. And Bolton did that to a certain extent, but he was also more equivocal. He was also certain times saying like, look, you know my views, but I'm the national security advisor, not the national security decider. And so that's how it was a way he would kind of always be like, all right, media, you know where I'm at on this. You know, Trump and I disagree on this, but I give my advice and Trump does what he wants. Alex Ward writes about national security

here at Vox. You can hear him on the Worldly podcast every Thursday. He's one of the co-hosts of that joint. And I bet this week they might just talk a little bit more about John Bolton. I'm Sean Ramos fromFirm. This of Today Explained. One last reminder that KiwiCo would like to give all of our listeners here at Today Explained a chance to try their fun, engaging projects about science and technology and engineering and arts and math out for free. And you can take them up on that offer at kiwico.com slash explained right now. When a Trump loves a Baltic