Bolton's and Mary Trump's Books; double whammy

[_Icarus]

Bolton Claims Trump Encouraged Xi To Build ‘Concentration Camps’ For Uighurs

Book By Trump’s Niece To Reveal He ‘Derided’ Father’s Alzheimer’s Struggles

Ten bucks says FOX News will either ignore both of these stories tonight or they'll immediately begin a mud slinging campaign against both authors.

I figured there needed to be a thread dedicated to discussing the revelations in these books.

[_Icarus]

1. Trump pleaded with China to help win the 2020 election
According to the excerpt of Bolton’s book published by the Wall Street Journal, Trump asked China to use its economic power to help him win a second election.

In one instance, Trump and President Xi Jinping were discussing hostility to China in the US. “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “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.”

2. Trump suggested he was open to serving more than two terms
In another eye-opening exchange published in the Wall Street Journal, Trump also seems to support Xi’s idea of eliminating presidential term limits. “Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him,” Bolton writes. “Xi said the US had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.”

3. Trump offered favors to dictators
Bolton’s book reportedly details cases where Trump tried to kill criminal investigations as favors to dictators. One incident published in the Washington Post includes a 2018 discussion with the Turkish president, Recep Erdoğan. Bolton says Erdoğan gave Trump a memo claiming that a Turkish firm under investigation in the US was innocent. “Trump then told Erdoğan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.”

4. Trump praised President Xi for China’s concentration camps
According to Bolton, Trump was also approving when Xi defended China’s internment of Uighur Muslims in concentration camps. “According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” According to leaked Communist party documents published in November, at least 1 million Uighur Muslims are detained in the camps.

5. Trump defended Saudi Arabia to distract from a story about Ivanka
Trump made headlines in November 2018 when he released a bizarre statement defending the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It included lines such as “The world is a very dangerous place!” and “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

According to Bolton’s book, making headlines was the point. A story about his daughter Ivanka using her personal email for government business was also in the news at the time. After waging war on Hilary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for doing the same thing, Trump need a distraction.

“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump reportedly said. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”

6. Trump’s top staff mocked him behind his back
From what has been reported, it sounds like Bolton’s book provides one of the clearest insights into the despair of Trump’s top officials behind the scenes.

In one example given by the New York Times, Bolton claims he received a note from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, after Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, simply saying, “He is so full of s**t.” On top of this, Pompeo also allegedly said a month later that Trump’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea had “zero probability of success”.

7. Trump thought Finland was part of Russia
Bolton’s book reportedly details some giant holes in Trump’s knowledge. In one instance, Bolton says Trump didn’t seem to know basic knowledge about the UK, asking its former prime minister Theresa May: “Oh, are you a nuclear power?”. On top of this, he also alleges that Trump once asked if Finland was part of Russia, and repeatedly mixed up the current and former presidents of Afghanistan.

8. Trump thought it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela
According to the Washington Post, Bolton claims Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool”, and that the country was “really part of the United States”.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... Nc?ocid=sf

[_moksha]

The whole idea of a criminal President using his now criminal Justice Department to go after Bolton for providing much-needed information to the American people seems horrendous. It behooves us to know to extent of Trump's ignorance and bad judgment.

[_Jersey Girl]

I look forward to Mary Trump's book. She's got the credentials and the insider information. Can't wait to see how Trump slams her. I'm certain it'll support every darn thing she's written about him.

[_Chap]

We all know what Trump is saying about Bolton now:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!
6:10 am · 18 Jun 2020·Twitter for iPhone
38.7K
Retweets
144.7K
Likes

Just for comparison in the context of this discussion, should we not ferret out the rather different things Trump said when he appointed Bolton? That might be illuminating, and would speak to the question of why so many of Trump's appointment have, by his own admission, turned out to be people who were really nasty, incompetent and frankly ludicrously stupid.

Repeatedly messing up like that in his choices for major positions of trust is a really bad strike against a president, no?

[_Jersey Girl]

Repeatedly messing up like that in his choices for major positions of trust is a really bad strike against a president, no?

Yes, it is. He doesn't realize how foolish it makes him look or that he's become so predictable.

[_Some Schmo]

I think Bolton's book is just as much an indictment of Bolton as of Trump. So he witnessed all this s-hit in real time and said nothing? What a piece of s-hit. The American people should sue his ass for every penny made by this too little too late book.

There's something in the GOP DNA that considers treasonous acts no big deal, unless done by Democrats.

[_Temp. Admin.]

What makes you assume he said nothing?

[_Chap]

Bolton's book is home and free.

An amusing extract from the article below - Republican critic Steve Schmidt replies to Trump's quoting his opinion on Bolton:

He failed in his duty to protect America from you. The most failed president in American history. You are incompetent and inept. You are amoral and indecent. You are losing this election. You will be defeated and repudiated. Your legacy is death, weakness and economic collapse.

Fun times ... now will Trump try to gag his niece, after failing with Bolton?

John Bolton: judge declines to block tell-all Trump book

Trump says Bolton ‘must pay a very big price for this’
Former national security adviser’s memoir due out Tuesday

A federal judge has declined to block the publication of a tell-all book by John Bolton, Donald Trump’s third national security adviser.

As Judge Royce C Lamberth noted, hundreds of thousands of copies of The Room Where It Happened have been shipped for sale and excerpts have been published widely. The book remains due to be released on Tuesday.

But the judge did have harsh words for Bolton, who he said had failed to complete a national security review and “likely published classified materials”. Bolton, the judge said, had “gambled with the national security of the United States” and “exposed … himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability”.

On Twitter, Trump said Bolton “must pay a very big price for this, as others have before him”. The president also praised the judge, contrived to claim “a big court win” and wrote of his former aide, a foreign policy hawk: “He likes dropping bombs on people, and killing them. Now he will have bombs dropped on him!”

Trump has sought to crack down on national security leakers and repeatedly advocated jail sentences for reporters who use such material.

Bolton was national security adviser between April 2018 and September 2019, when he resigned. Trump claimed to have fired him.

Published excerpts from his book have proved highly embarrassing to Trump, revelations including what Bolton says is impeachable conduct in seeking re-election help from foreign countries, China among them, and the president’s ignorance of basic geopolitical realities.

Critics of Bolton have pointed to his refusal to comply with a House subpoena in impeachment proceedings against Trump, which concerned attempts to have Ukraine find dirt on a political rival which Bolton now discusses in his book.

Bolton said he would be willing to testify in Trump’s Senate trial but Republicans controlling the upper chamber did not call extra witnesses before acquitting the president.

Lamberth, a US district court judge in Washington, wrote that though Bolton’s “unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy”.

He added: “As noted at the hearing, a CBS News reporter clutched a copy of the book while questioning the White House press secretary. By the looks of it, the horse is not just out of the barn – it is out of the country.”

Lamberth rejected the administration’s argument that “an injunction today would at least prevent any further spread of the book, such as limiting its audiobook release”.

“In taking it upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities,” he wrote, “Bolton may indeed have caused the country irreparable harm.

“But in the internet age, even a handful of copies in circulation could irrevocably destroy confidentiality. A single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop. With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe – many in newsrooms – the damage is done.”

On Twitter, Trump cited Steve Schmidt, a Republican critic of the president, who he said “called Wacko John Bolton ‘a despicable man who failed in his duty to protect America’. Also stated that he should never be allowed to serve in government again. So true!

“Plain and simple, John Bolton, who was all washed up until I brought him back and gave him a chance, broke the law by releasing classified information (in massive amounts). He must pay a very big price for this, as others have before him. This should never to happen again!!!”

Schmidt responded: “He failed in his duty to protect America from you. The most failed president in American history. You are incompetent and inept. You are amoral and indecent. You are losing this election. You will be defeated and repudiated. Your legacy is death, weakness and economic collapse.”

Few observers expected Trump to succeed in blocking Bolton’s book, a reality the president seemed to admit.

“Obviously,” the president wrote, “with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it … BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made.”

Those predicting failure in the attempt to block Bolton’s book cited first amendment rights and prior cases including that in which Richard Nixon failed to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers, leaked material about the conduct of the Vietnam war.

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, faced trial under the 1917 Espionage Act. All charges were dropped. More recently, Barack Obama’s use of the Espionage Act to go after leakers and whistleblowers attracted considerable scrutiny.

In January 2018, Trump responded to the publication by the Guardian of excerpts from Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, the first Trump tell-all, by threatening to sue its publisher. Henry Holt & Co simply rushed the book to sale.

Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, may clash with the president again next month. On 28 July it is set to release Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, a book by Trump’s niece.

The publisher says Mary L Trump, a clinical psychologist, will describe “a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse” that explain the inner workings of the Trump family.

Trump has reportedly mused about suing to stop the book. According to the Daily Beast, nearly 20 years ago Mary Trump signed a non-disclosure agreement regarding litigation over a will and her relationship with her uncle and his siblings.