As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a … has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that 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–and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.
He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal–about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk–all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work–and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”
The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there–from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
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I want to read.
While there are many books excoriating President Trump for his perceived missteps in office, this tome is the most compelling because it was written by someone who shares the Republican Party’s more hawkish policies. While many people have lambasted him from the left or right, Bolton talks about how style impacts substance, sometimes with devastating results. Love or hate Bolton’s ideals, it is hard to deny that his experience advising presidents imbues him with a gravitas that demands to be heard.
If I could rate this book a Zero, I would have. I didn’t know much about John Bolton besides what I had heard on the news and in newspapers, so I thought I would read this. I was so incensed by the 20th page in how pompous he came across, I immediately returned it. Remember cooties? That’s exactly how I felt I was slimed with.
There were points in this book I found myself gasping out loud at encounters with Trump and other government officials and world leaders. Are they all true? We’ll never know most likely, but even if only a few of them are true, the revelations are eye-opening to say the least.
Here is one excerpt I bookmarked as a prime example.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping
“…then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
John Bolton writes a fly-on-the-wall style memoir that gives us a peek into a world most of us will never be a part of. The writing is solid, though at times it feels like someone took a thesaurus to the draft to insert fancy word replacements. Maybe John Bolton talks this way naturally, but not knowing him personally, I can only judge the language as a general interest reader and the language often felt stilted.
This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in politics, memoirs, and solid non-fiction stories, and a must-read for anyone still undecided on who they will vote for in the US election.
Hard to read. Each chapter was written like a book report. Would not recommend this book
John Bolton shares his experiences with us as the former National Security Advisor to Trump. The author writes Trump in 2 weekly intelligence briefs rather than the customary daily briefs spoke more than the briefers on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand .The writer tells us of his vindictiveness against John McCain even after his death .The writer also informs us how the National Security Council received intelligence reports in early January and would avoid closing down the country until March One must ask the question is tweety here to serve or be served
Self indulgent, egotistical, just drags on. Should have testified, then written the book. I got as a father’s day gift and thought might be interesting. Had to plow through a lot of just not worthwhile detail to get to the meat on the bone. Good to fall asleep by.
Rips Obama and Democrats without much reason multiple times, so bad that I thought he must have been fired by them. Being an independent I just thought who cares about this guy’s opinion.
I hope he never gets a dime from this travesty. I have read 6 or 7 other books about the White House like Mary Trump’s, Tur, Rucker, Russian R, and more. All were way better reads, more engaging, much more enjoyable.
This Bolton book should have been a much shorter effort, detail in correct places, edited by a professional, and kept focused. Did not need to meander into things like how he can pat himself on the back about knowing a leader of a country for 20 years, and thereby he knows more about everything concerning that country/person than anyone else in history.
And he admits he went along with Trump on issues he did not believe in….
but he says he was right even though he went along….so how is he right?
He writes he was going to resign many times when he disagreed so much. But then he agreed with Trump on the record, although he was right and Trump was wrong. Just crap,
just as I wrote here!
If you asked me prior to the 2016 election if I would ever deign to read a book written by John Bolton, I would have laughed in your face. Living in the time of Trump changed my reading habits (and not always for the better).
John Bolton may be able to string words together into a coherent sentence, but he is as big a narcissist as Trump. As you can probably tell, I am a fan of neither. It is also obvious that Bolton considers himself erudite. After reading several chapters, I mentally started referring to him at Bolton The Not So Erudite. He really should try harder to know when to use ‘who’ and when to use ‘whom.’
There are 14 chapters in this book, plus an epigraph and epilog, and some 20 pages of photographs that make up 75% of the book. If you skip the photos, you can shave off another 5% of the book. The remaining 25-30% of the book is given over to Notes and an Index. The book seems less daunting when the fluff is removed.
Throughout the book, Bolton obsesses on the topic of Iran, diminishes Obama’s presidency and foreign policy at every turn, and denigrates the press. In fact, if you picked up this book in hopes of getting the inside track on Trump, you will be sorely disappointed. His obsession with Iran goes something like this: Turkey? Iran is screwing us. Syria? Iran is screwing us. North Korea? Iran is screwing us. Venezuela? Iran is screwing us. The Iran nuclear deal? Obama screwed us. Trump is an aside in Bolton’s endless narrative of his own plans and accomplishments while Trump’s National Security Advisor.
It is abundantly clear that Bolton considers himself to be of superior intellect, not only to Trump, but to anyone else with whom he is in contact. He comes across as arrogant, self-serving, and extremely condescending. Bolton also shows a specific disdain for Mnuchin whenever possible. Apparently, Mnuchin insinuates himself into as many meetings as possible whether or not the meeting involves Treasury.
As mentioned above, this long, and often repetitious tome deals mostly with Bolton’s obsession with Iran. The supposed ‘good stuff,’ namely Ukraine is in Chapter 14. You can skip the epigraph and first 13 chapters if your interest in reading this book centers around impeachment and Bolton not testifying. Actually, you can pretty much skip the entire book because there is little that hasn’t already been reported in the press.
If you bought this book to find out what Trump has said and done in the Oval Office, you will be sorely disappointed. Bolton doesn’t do a blow by blow of the word salad we have all come to expect. Bolton leaves no doubt that he finds Trump to be ignorant and beneath him. He does comment on Trump’s overall lack of interest in this or that, and he never fails to let his readers know that Trump only talks about winning and money… mostly OPM (other people’s money). Trump’s obsession with making the other guy pay harkens back to “that bum’s got more money than I do” as told to Ivanka.
If, on the other hand, you obsess over policy like a teenager over the latest boyband, you can wallow in Bolton’s self-aggrandizing ‘only I can fix this’ rants on how policy should be done. By the time you read this review, THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED will be so yesterday.
Thought I am not a fan of John Bolton, I found this book to be educational. I learned a great deal about international relations, the state department, and how our government operates, and doesn’t operate.
a must read for any literate american.
The only take away from this book is that Mr. Bolton seems to think he is the smartest person in the room. He portrays everyone else as stupid. Everyone else makes mistakes or misunderstands what is happening. Mr. Bolton comes across as a smug, pompous prick.
As for testifying before Congress? Why bother? He tells nothing in this book that isn’t already known. Yeah, Trump is a childish spoiled brat, we knew that. Trump is easily influenced by Fox News, we knew that. Trump has a massive need for adoration, we knew that. Trump is a habitual liar, we knew that. Not sure why this was considered such a “bombshell” book. Did Bolton and Trump collaborate with the law suit to keep it from being published, to drive up sales? I found nothing in this book that I consider at all affecting National Security.
Mr. Bolton is a serious name dropper. The book would have been shorter if he hadn’t kept referring to who he was working for (when I was with 43, back in…) at every sentence.
The book was easy to read, didn’t notice any glaring editing errors.
All I actually got from this book was that Mr. Bolton is on a massive ego trip and Trump is a jerk, we knew that.