When former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton was first indicted last fall, he suggested not only that he planned to plead not guilty, he also characterized the case an “abuse of power” by Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which he compared to Stalinist Russia.
This week, Bolton shifted gears: As part of plea agreement with prosecutors, he’s prepared to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information contained in a private diary entry.
The president, who made no effort to hide his contempt for Bolton, initially had nothing to say publicly about Thursday’s developments, until a reporter broached the subject Friday afternoon during a brief Q&A on Air Force One.
“Well, I was never much of a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said. “I never thought he was a smart person, that he was a radical right in terms of war, not in terms of other things. He was, he wanted to go to war with anybody that opened their mouth, anybody that talked, and I used him for a purpose, you know. He was involved with [George W. Bush], and he created a lot of problems, but he always wanted to kill people in war, and that was okay for me, as long as I didn’t listen to him, which I never did.”
The president quickly added, “He’s a, he’s a bad guy, John Bolton, he’s a dirty guy, and we caught him, and then we caught him, and you know, he wrote a book. You look at all the information he took, I mean, if you look at that case, it’s a great honor to have helped from the standpoint of encouragement.”
There’s a lot to digest in his minute-long answer, but three elements I think are especially important.
First, nine different people (and counting) have served as Trump’s White House national security advisor — more than any other president since the office was created in 1955 — but Bolton had the longest tenure, lasting roughly a year and a half. If Trump “never” liked, trusted, respected or listened to his longest-serving national security advisor, that says at least as much about the president as it does about Bolton.
Second, let’s not brush past the fact that Bolton is poised to plead guilty to, of all things, mishandling classified information. Trump might find that worthy of celebration, but it’s worth emphasizing that the president faced plenty of allegations of mishandling classified information himself, making this a rather awkward line of attack.