Honestly, at this point all John Bolton may be accomplishing is providing a much-needed (for Trump!) distraction…
Yeah Trump’s lashing out: calling Bolton a “dope” and even quoting the New York Times’ review of Bolton’s book, which calls it “exceedingly tedious”. And yeah it’s probably a big deal that Trump, according to Bolton, asked China’s President Xi to help him win re-election. But is that going to change Trump’s support or not on either side?
So it’s Bolton who’s going to come out looking like the biggest fool. For Bolton, at best it’s like he’s swinging hard at an adversary, but his punches can no longer connect. Even if he’s the more skillful, cleaner, righteous fighter, whatever, he’s still stupidly fighting a bout that was decided long ago. And the unskillful, dirty, outmatched opponent has long ago claimed victory, whether he was deserving of it or not, stumbled out of the ring, and moved on.
Bolton’s memoir therefore, should be met only with derision and scorn. Whether you support the President or not.
To do otherwise at this point in time is to actually do the President a favor by transporting anyone paying attention to it back in time to a time before COVID-19 and George Floyd. When the President was thoroughly disgraced, yet simultaneously seemed untouchable.
Bolton’s book was originally scheduled to come out on St. Patrick’s Day, but he held back in order to avoid legal entanglements with the White House. Guess what? Trump’s taking him to court anyway. Because Trump never doesn’t take anyone to court.
And we really do hate when people are critical of books they’ve never read and never intend to read. But it’s not really the book we’ve got a problem with, it’s the concept and timing with which Bolton chose to unfurl his lavish info-scape.
All the “juicy nuggets” and titillating interviews Bolton will be handing out are not deserving of the breathless way the media is consuming and regurgitating them. Bolton wants to reinsert himself as a major political player. He’s not. He never was. You know how the title of his book is “The Room Where It Happened”? In that room was just about all he was.
What’s Bolton trying to accomplish anymore? Mimicking the boss he’s attempting to deride by deflecting blame for ineptitude and failed foreign policy away from himself?
Setting the record straight? Rehabilitating his good name. which was never that good in the first place? Trying to prove he’s so great at disruption that he can even disrupt the disrupter-in-chief?
As we’ve said before, it was Bolton who shuttered the White House pandemic response team; we’ve never understood why Trump didn’t blame him completely for the administration’s dismal Coronavirus response. Except we do understand: that would’ve meant Trump admitting his administration’s response was dismal.
The only really damning thing that lingers with Trump in relation to Bolton, is that Trump was enough of a dupe to hire the lunatic Bolton in the first place. Because that’s a pattern for this President that continues until today, and has in fact intensified, as he even more fervently seeks candidates with extreme viewpoints and a taste for destruction.
Bolton could’ve been really useful, if he really thought Trump was inept and dangerous, during impeachment proceedings. When he could’ve appeared before the House. Or even just held a news conference, saying the same things he’s saying today.
Which are nothing—we suggest—we didn’t already know or suspect. Mainly that all Trump cares about—really, all Trump cares about—is not losing the next election. And also—and this is kind of tied in—self aggrandizement.
Speaking of self-aggrandizement, we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so. Back around Thanksgiving, when we warned:
“[Don’t] expect John Bolton to behave the way you want him to behave….John Bolton only cares about one thing: John Bolton. And what makes him feel better and smarter than anybody.”
Because at this point in time, after the U.S. has been through all it’s been through after Trump’s impeachment, Bolton’s upbraiding of the President amounts to next to nothing anymore but:
“A tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”