Trump’s Ex-National Security Advisor Torches Him After Mike Waltz Ouster: ‘Chaos Is Embedded in His DNA’
Pool via AP
John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 until September 2019 during his first term, took to The Wall Street Journal to blast his old boss on Thursday, just hours after it was reported that Trump was removing Walz from Bolton’s own post and nominating him to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“Donald Trump’s chaotic national-security governance is in full flood. Whether it’s risking American military operations, making volatile, highly dubious tariff decisions, hiring uninformed senior advisers, or seeing senior government officials dissenting from presidential decisions, the disarray is palpable and likely to spread. The upheaval continued with President Trump’s announcement Thursday that he plans to nominate national security adviser Mike Waltz to be America’s United Nations ambassador—with Secretary of State Marco Rubio doing double duty as national security adviser ‘in the interim,'” began Bolton before observing that “chaos is embedded in his DNA and endemic in his team.”
Bolton went on to cite JD Vance’s criticism of Trump’s approach to taking on Yemen’s Houthi terrorists, Steve Witkoff’s growing portfolio and ineptitude at managing it, Signalgate, and more as evidence.
“That pinball-machine style of decision-making also prevailed during Mr. Trump’s first term and is particularly evident today on tariffs. It isn’t conducive to effective policy formulation and is far from normal. The president, however, chose his current team through the prism of personal fealty,” argued the hawkish foreign policy hand. “Accordingly, his nature is amplified and unmodulated, not measured against competing priorities, information or potential consequences. This means more trouble ahead, self-inflicted wounds to the administration and, more important, to American national-security ties strengthened over decades of quiet effort.”
He concluded:
The confusion stems mainly from Mr. Trump himself, not his advisers. Ironically, his nature undercuts the National Security Act of 1947, whose rationale is to give presidents greater ability to master the foreign, defense and intelligence bureaucracies. Presidents who don’t use the National Security Council mechanism undercut their planning capabilities, managerial control and decision follow-through. Mr. Trump further demonstrated the incoherence of his approach by firing top-level intelligence officials and NSC senior directors.
There’s no good solution given Mr. Trump’s character. Nonetheless, his advisers should improve the decision-making process, if not for his benefit, at least for America’s.
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