Bolton's chief of staff praises President's 'principled decision'

FPI / June 21, 2020

In his soon to be released book “The Room Where It Happened”, former national security adviser John Bolton claims the "turning point" which changed his views on President Donald Trump's ability to lead was the president's decision not to bomb Iran after it shot down a U.S. drone.

Former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Thursday that what Bolton, his former boss, described as the “turning point” actually “disproves the whole book.”

“I want to talk about this in terms of what John Bolton called the turning point for him with Mr. Trump, which Bolton said was 'the most irrational thing I ever saw a president do,' ” said Fleitz, responding to MacCallum’s question about why Bolton wrote and released the book. “And this was when President Trump decided last June not to bomb Iran at the advice of John Bolton and other national security advisers.”

Recalling when Trump decided not to attack Iran after a U.S. drone was shot down because “we would have killed 100-200 people,” Fleitz called it a “principled decision.”

“This was not to win votes,” he said. “This wasn’t to promote the president domestically. It reflected the president’s principle not to get America into additional wars. And it was an act of leadership, because he bucked all of his national security advisers, Pompeo, the Secretary of Defense, so when we hear that the president does not have principles, he’s not qualified to lead, this incident that Bolton puts forward as the turning point for his relationship with President Trump in my mind it disproves the whole book.”

Fleitz, who is on the WorldTribune.com Board of Advisors, told MacCallum that he had called for Bolton to “withdraw the book” in January because he doesn’t believe someone in that position “should be revealing internal candid discussions with the president.”

“The president has to be able to know that whatever he says in those discussions won’t be made public,” Fleitz said. “If he thinks they are going to be made public, a president won’t consult with experts and I think that is a dangerous prospect for national security.”

Bolton’s upcoming book is reportedly filled with criticisms of Trump’s decisions, leadership capability, and fitness for office.

The Justice Department has attempted to block the book from its scheduled June 23 publication by filing a lawsuit against the former national security adviser.

Fleitz noted that while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others “found out how to work with the president and be effective,” Bolton and others “couldn’t figure this out.”

“The job of the senior advisers is to work with the president, not to fight with him and to implement his policies,” Fleitz concluded. “And I am very sorry that John Bolton couldn’t figure out how to do that.”

Meanwhile, in a June 18 press release under the heading "I Was In The Room Too", Pompeo said:

"I’ve not read the book, but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods. It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton’s final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people. To our friends around the world: you know that President Trump’s America is a force for good in the world."

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Thursday that Bolton is practicing “deep-swamp revenge porn” with the allegations in his book.

“He did the same thing with the Bush administration,” Navarro said on Fox News.

“It’s the deep-swamp political equivalent of revenge porn,” Navarro said. “The guy got fired because he didn’t obey the chain of command, because he was out of touch with what President Donald J. Trump stands for in terms of foreign policy.”

Navarro said Bolton came into one meeting “giddy” about a possible coup in Venezuela.

“He comes in here in his seersucker summer suits with the big mustache,” Navarro said. “I was in a staff meeting one time — he walked in and he was absolutely giddy at the prospect of a coup in Venezuela.”

“It was, like, weird. I’m thinking to myself wait a minute, this is a serious, serious matter and he’s giddy. There’s something wrong with that dude.”

Free Press International