John Bolton
Appearances
IHIP News
The USA Has OFFICIALLY Aligned with The Axis of Evil
Dit is echt een van de meest ongelooflijke performances die ik heb gezien. En ik denk dat het belangrijk is om te begrijpen dat Trump en Vance dit persoonlijk eigen. Dit is een soort attack op een land dat zich bevindt van een onvermoeide agressie. En ze hebben het gewoon ontvangen op Zelenskyj. ...in public. And whether they planned it or not, I don't know.
IHIP News
The USA Has OFFICIALLY Aligned with The Axis of Evil
I'm not that concerned with questions of etiquette. I am concerned that the president, vice president of the United States... ...have sided with the aggressor, with, as Mike Waltz was just saying there... ...somebody who's trying to recreate the Russian Empire. Something he's been very clear about since 2005 at least. And now you have...
IHIP News
The USA Has OFFICIALLY Aligned with The Axis of Evil
Zelfs als Mike Waltz en Marco Rubio in de administratie staan. Dit is niet de tweede maand van Trumps tenuur. Dit is de vijftiende maand van zijn twee jaar termijn. Dit is het moment dat iemand 180 graden van het begrijpen van Amerikaanse alliërs tot het ondersteunen van Amerika's adversarissen doet, dat je verlaat. Mark, je zegt dat Marco Rubio zich zou vertrekken? En Mike Waltz.
IHIP News
The USA Has OFFICIALLY Aligned with The Axis of Evil
Dit is echt de tijd om het te doen. Als ze nu niet uitkomen... Oké, daar heb je het.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
I mean, I don't disagree with John Kelly on his assessment about what Trump does and what's wrong with it. But to be a fascist, you have to think in at least some conceptual level, which Trump never does. Trump is a problem without that label. And he has caused a lot of damage. He did in his first term. He will in his second term.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
I just don't like to get lost in the bumper sticker argument rather than arguing about substance. And I would say I don't think John Kelly disagrees with me on that.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
It's too far above Trump's capabilities. I mean, he has no philosophy. He has in the national security space, he has no grand strategy. He doesn't do policy as we conventionally understand that term. This is difficult to accept. I know it was difficult for me to accept that anybody could be so totally transactional, so totally focused on what's in it for him. But that's Trump.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
There are plenty of people around him with... with problematic philosophies, people who do have the ability to think at a more conceptual level. But what they say may ultimately be reflected in certain Trump decisions, but it's not because he shares their worldview or anything like that.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Well, I think he wants to be the center of attention. I think that's probably his principal motivating factor. And I think his approach was once described by Charles Krauthammer very well. And Krauthammer said it to me, but I think he said it publicly on any number of occasions, that he began by thinking Trump was an 11-year-old.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
But he realized after a close evaluation that he was about 10 years off, Trump's really a one-year-old who just sees everything in the world and asks the question, what's in this for me? Somebody else who I don't remember the name observed that Trump doesn't have ideas, he has reactions. And I think that's also an important insight.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
So in my book, I said, if you took all of his decisions in his first term, They'd be like a big archipelago of dots. A lot of the dots I agreed with. But if you tried to connect the dots, you know, you're welcome to it. Trump himself couldn't connect the dots.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Well, I think it's even more incoherent. But what you're seeing in public now that many people find surprising, I think, is what many of us who were in the first term saw in private, but that he never said in public. A lot of these ideas have been kicking around. I think, obviously, they spent the four years in exile at Mar-a-Lago planning.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Their first 100 days, much more was accomplished from Trump's point of view than in his first 100 days in the first term. I'm not sure, though, that history will record that after this burst of activity in the first 100 days, there's much more follow-up. I think Trump will get bogged down in a lot of subsidiary issues that happen to catch his attention.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
For example, he's now chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, And I can think of nothing more important than for a man who knows so much about buildings and the hospitality industry to spend a little time on the question of the rugs at the Kennedy Center, the carpeting, the curtains and the stages. I mean, I think really some high-level attention is required for that.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
And I think if really I get his ear, I could get him over at the Kennedy Center for a day a week for the next several months.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
I don't think Trump is an existential threat. I think our institutions are a lot stronger than him. And not so much the fall of the Roman Empire, but the fall of the Roman Republic began with Sulla and then Pompey and then Catiline and then Julius Caesar. And I'll tell you, Donald Trump is none of those four. Thank goodness. So I think we will survive.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
But I think many of the things you've mentioned— He has singled out by executive order, for example, Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Bureau at Department of Homeland Security in his first term. prosecution because he dared to say that the 2020 election was safe and free from interference in cyberspace, which Trump didn't want to believe.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
He singled out a fellow named Miles Taylor, who had been chief of staff to the Secretary of Homeland Security. These are actions by a president with no predicate for a criminal investigation that I think are very threatening. But I think you've got to evaluate all this. And there are many more. You've named some. We could name others. That's Trump making the first move.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
And he's done all this, as you say, in the first 100 days. He's done it in Trump time because he stays up until 2 in the morning. He's constantly active. The judicial system obviously doesn't normally react with such speed. So Trump makes his headline and then moves on to something else. And the real question is, what is followed up?
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
And I think if we come back in a couple of years, we'll see a lot of the effort of the first 100 days just in ashes because the courts will have held. I believe they will. I think they are. fully independent. I'm not worried about that. I think that is the ultimate check.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
It obviously will have cost people money for attorney's fees and time and aggravation and concern, but I think a lot of these efforts will fail and they will set precedents that will make it even harder for a future president to try this kind of thing. I'm hoping, for example, that on tariffs, not directly what you're asking about.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
But I hope, you know, it was 95 years since the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were an act of monumental stupidity in 1930. I think history will record the Trump-Vance tariffs as another monumental act of stupidity, and hopefully it'll be another 95-year-long lesson. So from that perspective, a lot of what has happened in the first 100 days, we have to say, is incomplete.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Because while Trump has, you know, moved his pawn to King for the rest of the system is still reacting.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Well, you know, we've suffered a lot worse in this country. We did have a civil war where over 600,000 soldiers died of one cause or another, and the country moved on. So I'm not underestimating
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
uh... the problems the trump is causing i just i just think it's important to bring as many people along on the proposition that this is unacceptable and i think sometimes uh... you know using uh... uh... the rhetoric that says this is existential turns people off and uh... i i'm looking to convince as many people as possible that this is an aberration in american politics
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
that it's not sustainable, and particularly in the Republican Party, that beginning in 2026, certainly in 2028, we've got to move on from it.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Yeah, absolutely. I voted for Mike Pence. Justice for Mike Pence. Who did his job according to the Constitution on January the 6th, 2021. Are you hoping he's going to run in 2028? I don't know what he wants to do. America owes Mike Pence a big debt of gratitude. A lot that happened during the Trump administration.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
maybe I should say a lot that didn't happen during the first term of the Trump presidency, you can attribute to him. And I hope he's not looking for publicity, but I hope he's kept careful notes of everything he did for posterity to know.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
No, I think, you know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security, too.
Today, Explained
100 days of payback
Well, I'm looking at the definition of fascism. It's a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized hypocrisy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the type of things that he thinks