Donald Trump’s former national security adviser says the Iran war threatens to expose the president as a leader who is directionless on strategy and out of his depth in the war room.
Speaking on The Daily Beast Podcast, John Bolton suggested that Trump’s struggle to engage with advisers on intelligence leaves him in over his head in his war against Iran.
“He’s the only president I’ve seen who felt uncomfortable in the Situation Room,” said Bolton, who also served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Bolton, 77, said that during his tenure as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, he saw that the commander-in-chief often “didn’t care about” or simply “couldn’t process” the briefings his senior advisers delivered on national security and foreign policy.
“It was a different experience than I’ve seen with any other American president, both the decisions that I participated in at lower levels in the government as I worked my way through the chairs,” he told host Joanna Coles. “And I think it’s a problem.”
Trump, 79, who evaded military service by claiming he had bone spurs in his heels, seemed visibly uneasy whenever he led a National Security Council meeting in the White House’s Situation Room, according to Bolton.
“I think it was because there were a lot of people in the room who knew a lot more about what we were talking about than he did,” he suggested.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Trump “didn’t take briefings all that seriously” and would “frequently talk more than the intelligence briefers, which makes it hard to consume intelligence.”
Bolton invoked the famous line attributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson: “You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.”
“Obviously Trump had never heard that,” said Bolton.
Despite having long called for regime change in Iran, Bolton said he was “very worried” that Trump “hasn’t thought through the implications or laid the groundwork” of his ambitions in his war against Iran, which has already claimed the lives of six U.S. troops and hundreds of civilians.
Trump, who drastically shrank the National Security Council last year, has failed to stick to a consistent line about his long-term strategy and goals in the war.
Bolton told PBS on Tuesday that the “objective of overthrowing the regime is critical” for “peace and stability” in the Middle East.
He told Coles that Trump should commit to a longer conflict, but added, “he has a short attention span.”
“As long as things are going successfully, he’ll stick with it. If we run into real difficulty, and I hope we don’t, and we shouldn’t at this point, but if we do, because anything is possible, that would be the testing time to see whether he was able to stick it out,” he said.
Bolton said Trump often felt uncomfortable in his decisions, pointing to a 2019 incident when the president decided to order a retaliatory strike against Iran, which had shot down an unmanned U.S. drone, only to abruptly call it off after the mission had already been partially launched. Trump said at the time that he had changed his mind after being told 150 people would die.
Bolton argued that in his second term, Trump “feels more at ease” with making consequential decisions.
“But it doesn’t mean he considers in any more detail or any greater length or scope what exactly the implications are of what he’s doing,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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