Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against former aide John Bolton on Wednesday as he increasingly signals that he will back away from Washington’s center-right foreign policy establishment.
The president was asked about his day-one decision to strip a federal protective detail from Bolton, who served as his national security adviser early on in his first term in the White House.
Bolton, long one of the most outspoken supporters of direct military action to combat Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, was allegedly targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime in 2022 in retaliation for the Trump administration’s killing of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).
Trump went on an extended rant about Bolton, whom he claimed “blew up the Middle East” with his support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the second Bush administration.
“I thought he was a very dumb person, but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger,” the president told a reporter who asked about the decision to strip Bolton’s security detail. “He’s the one that got us involved … convinced Bush, which was a terrible decision, to blow up the Middle East. We blew up the Middle East, and we left.”
Trump added: “We got nothing out of it except a lot of death. We killed a lot of people, and John Bolton was one of those guys, a stupid guy.”
As for Bolton’s protection, Trump said: “I think there was enough time. We take a job, you take a job, you want to do a job, we’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?”
Bolton has been a harsh critic of the president in recent years, complaining just months ago that in Trump’s mind, the truth is whatever he wants it to be.”
The Independent has reached out to a spokesperson for Bolton for the former ambassador’s response to Trump’s attacks. Bolton served as UN ambassador for the U.S. between 2005-2006.
Bolton a day earlier released a statement prior to the president’s remarks Wednesday stating that he was “disappointed” in Trump’s decision to terminate his security detail.
“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service. Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021,” wrote Bolton on X.
”The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination,” he noted.
Bolton added: “The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”
This is the second move in as many days that could be taken as direct rebukes of the hawkish wing of Republican Party foreign policy thinkers — long one of Trump’s favorite punching bags, but one he nevertheless continues to flirt with (even making one, Marco Rubio, his secretary of State).
