Trump tears into his ‘stupid’ former aide Bolton, says he ‘blew up the Middle East’ – UK Times

Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against former aide John Bolton on Wednesday as he increasingly signals that he will back away from Washington’s center-right foreign policy establishment.

The president was asked about his day-one decision to strip a federal protective detail from Bolton, who served as his national security adviser early on in his first term in the White House.

Bolton, long one of the most outspoken supporters of direct military action to combat Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, was allegedly targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime in 2022 in retaliation for the Trump administration’s killing of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).

Trump went on an extended rant about Bolton, whom he claimed “blew up the Middle East” with his support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the second Bush administration.

“I thought he was a very dumb person, but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger,” the president told a reporter who asked about the decision to strip Bolton’s security detail. “He’s the one that got us involved … convinced Bush, which was a terrible decision, to blow up the Middle East. We blew up the Middle East, and we left.”

Trump added: “We got nothing out of it except a lot of death. We killed a lot of people, and John Bolton was one of those guys, a stupid guy.”

As for Bolton’s protection, Trump said: “I think there was enough time. We take a job, you take a job, you want to do a job, we’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?”

Bolton has been a harsh critic of the president in recent years, complaining just months ago that in Trump’s mind, the truth is whatever he wants it to be.”

The Independent has reached out to a spokesperson for Bolton for the former ambassador’s response to Trump’s attacks. Bolton served as UN ambassador for the U.S. between 2005-2006.

Bolton a day earlier released a statement prior to the president’s remarks Wednesday stating that he was “disappointed” in Trump’s decision to terminate his security detail.

“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service. Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021,” wrote Bolton on X.

”The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination,” he noted.

Bolton added: “The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”

This is the second move in as many days that could be taken as direct rebukes of the hawkish wing of Republican Party foreign policy thinkers — long one of Trump’s favorite punching bags, but one he nevertheless continues to flirt with (even making one, Marco Rubio, his secretary of State).

On Monday, Trump singled out four people — whom he identified in a Truth Social post as “presidential appointees” — for a verbal flogging and firing. Three were clear political enemies of his: celebrity chef and liberal darling José Andres, former Atlanta mayor (and Democrat) Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who accused his commander-in-chief of being “facist to the core” in a book authored by Bob Woodward.

The fourth was Brian Hook, appointed to the Wilson Center for Scholars, a U.S. government-funded think tank by former President Joe Biden. What Trump failed to acknowledge in his Truth Social post was that Hook was no Biden loyalist, and was actually part of the nebulous Trump transition team, helping the effort staff up its diplomatic corps at the State Department.

Hook is no stranger to a Trump State Department, either. He was the current presiden’t special envoy to Iran, a key player in the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign pursued by the first Trump administration to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons while stifling its economy and challenging its efforts to support militant groups across the entire region.

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It was that “maximum pressure” campaign which may have been his downfall.

The American Conservative reported that while Trump made no mention of his connection to Hook in his note publicly axing the former top diplomat, there had indeed been a reason for it: the president’s team was reportedly unhappy with Hook’s assertion during an interview that “maximum pressure” would be the new Trump administration’s posture, even as Iran’s government is making diplomatic overtures to Washington, D.C. and the West.

It’s safe to assume that such a posture is at least still on the table, however. One Trump transition team source told the Financial Times as much in November: “He’s determined to reinstitute a maximum pressure strategy to bankrupt Iran as soon as possible.”

Given the makeup of Congress, Trump will have no shortage of allies if he goes that route. Senators and members of the House from both parties are supportive of tightening sanctions enforcement against Iran.

But even Hook, before his departure, acknowledged that Trump was not considering regime change, either directly or otherwise.

In that fateful CNN interview in November, he said he had “no reason” to doubt that Trump would reinstate the maximum pressure campaign, but added: “President Trump has no interest in regime change. The future of Iran will be determined by the Iranian people.”