Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was in “the room where it happened,” to quote a popular musical – and the title of his new book – but when the time came to tell Congress what he knew, he didn’t. Bolton served Trump for 17 months, during critical periods of the Trump presidency, yet made the decision his million-dollar advance and subsequent book deal royalties far outweighed his obligations as a public servant to tell the truth about Trump, when it was most important.
Now that his book is about to come out, Bolton’s publisher is dangling juicy details from his time with the President, but many Americans aren’t having it – causing his name to be the top trending topic on Twitter.
Some believe had Bolton testified the Senate would have had no choice but to convict. And as some would say, had the Senate convicted Trump, removing him from office, far fewer than 116,000 Americans would have been killed by coronavirus.
Some are also urging Americans to not buy Bolton’s book, regardless of its possible bombshell contents, knowing that the most important parts will likely come out in the press – or from publisher Simon & Schuster.
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, as Simon & Schuster’s excerpt details.
“In fact, he argues the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full-range of his foreign policy,” the excerpt adds:
Bolton was asked by the House to testify for a Trump impeachment investigation deposition, but he refused to do so unless they served him with a subpoena. They did not. Later, Bolton said he would testify before the Senate before the Senate, again, if he was served with a subpoena – the GOP-controlled Senate had no intention of calling any witnesses, so Bolton was never served.
As many said at the time, he also could have sat down with a reporter and revealed what he knew about Trump, but chose not to. He could have published excerpts from his book, or written an op-ed, or taken any number of actions to help the nation with a president whose actions he clearly did not support. He did not.
Here’s how some are responding: