John Bolton Book Excerpts Are Dropping, And They Are BUGF*CK

Under the bus everyone goes, JOHN BOLTON DID NOTHING WRONG!

You up on the whole legal fightover John Bolton's book? (Wonkette kickback linky here!) Make sure you get current on that, because ready or not, HERE COME THE BUGFUCK EXCERPTS.

We had been hearing reports that Bolton just really thought the House impeachment managers did a dereliction of duty by focusing on Trump trying to force Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election. Why? Because, according to Bolton, they should have investigated him for doing that like A HUNDRED ELEVENTY BILLION times. That really makes us want to kick Bolton in the dick, because of how he could have totally gone to the impeachment hearings and said that to Adam Schiff's face.

But hey, let bygones be mustache rides, as the old saying goes.

'GIIIIIIIINA IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

The Washington Post   starts its report on Bolton's book with a heartwarming anecdote about Trump trying to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to help steal him the election:

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that "Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

"He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China's economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, 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."

It's funny because during the Ukraine Trump impeachment, Trump literally did a "GIIIIIIINA IF YOU'RE LISTENING," while standing on the White House lawn, asking China to investigate the Bidens for him. It's also funny because last year Hillary Clinton went on the Rachel Maddow Show and said a hypothetical, to try to illustrate how bugfuck Trump's election-stealing crimes are, asking what if the Democrats said "GIIIIIIINA IF YOU'RE LISTENING" and asked China to get Trump's tax returns.

That was May of 2019 when she made that joke on the Maddow show. Trump went ahead and tried to make sure China helped him instead in June 2019.

The Wall Street Journal has that full section about Trump trying to get Xi to help steal him the election, if you'd like to read it. It also has this lovely anecdote about how Trump told Xi that building concentration camps to imprison Uighur Muslims in was great, just great:

At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council's top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.

Feel free right here to insert your own stomach-churning joke about how it's pretty great Trump wasn't around to give Hitler any advice back in the day!

Anyway, Bolton's book sounds like it is chock-full of instances of Trump pretty much only and always focusing on getting friendly dictators to help him steal his next election. From the WSJ excerpt:

Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security. I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations.

And according to Bolton's book (GOLLY GOD, this would have made for good IMPEACHMENT TESTIMONY, you fucking motherfucker John Bolton), Trump's friendly dictators used that, and Trump's own dumbass preening stupidity, to influence him.

RUSSIA IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

One time in May 2019, Trump and Vladimir Putin were chitty-chattin' on the old Obamaphone, talkin' about Venezuela, and Putin said opposition leader Juan Guaidó is just like Hillary Clinton. Bolton said that was just some really good propaganda, from Putin! Did it convince Trump to back Nicholas Maduro instead? Yes, writes Bolton, it "largely persuaded" Trump.

Indeed, the Post 's account of Bolton's book suggests that Bolton lays out a consistent pattern "of a president who is impulsive, churlish and consistently opposed to U.S. policy designed to discourage Russian aggression and to sanction Putin's malign behavior."

TURKEY IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

Here's another example of a dictator dictating to the American president what he must do: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish dictator, was trying to get Trump to get the Southern District of New York (SDNY) to stop investigating "a Turkish firm" — Halkbank, it would appear — and Trump was like oh sure, you bet, I will make the SDNY stop investigating the Turkish state-owned bank for violating US sanctions on Iran. And why was Trump so very OK with that?

"Trump then told Erdogan 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," Bolton writes.

Because OBAMAGATE! This confirms a story we already knew, because after that, Trump did indeed HEREBY ORDER Attorney General Bill Barr to make that case against Halkbank disappear.

JARED IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

In another section of the book, Bolton writes about how Fucking Jared apparently has a special "son-in-law channel" to do foreign policy with Turkey, because of how the finance minister of Turkey is Erdogan's son-in-law.  

"I briefed Pompeo and Mnuchin on this new 'son-in-law channel' and they both exploded." Pompeo was furious, Bolton writes, "because this was one more example of Kushner's doing international negotiations he shouldn't have been doing (along with the never quite ready Middle East peace plan.)"

 Whew . This book throws fuckin' everybody under the bus. More Jared, this time doing Mexican foreign policy when he wasn't supposed to be doing Mexican foreign policy:

"Why is Jared calling Mexicans?" [John] Kelly asked loudly, according to the book. "Because I asked him to. How else are we going to stop the caravans?" Trump responded.

 Whew .

BILL BARR AND MIKE POMPEO AND JOHN KELLY IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

Speaking of buses and the one that this book apparently is warming up for Bill Barr, the Post 's account says Bolton was so freaked out by Trump's behavior that he and Barr met in 2019 to talk about it and Barr was also very worried about (the appearance of) it. We bet.

Moreover, reportedly Bolton, John Kelly, and also Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "all considered resigning in disgust or frustration" at times, as the Post puts it.

"What if we have a real crisis like 9/11 with the way he makes decisions?" Kelly is quoted as asking at one point as he considers resigning.

"He second-guessed people's motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government," Bolton writes ...

One time Pompeo and Bolton were on the same call with Trump and the South Korean president, and Pompeo said he was "having a cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia" listening to it. Bolton agreed it was very awful and bad, and called the phone call a "near-death experience."

The New York Times   has the excerpt that really throws Pompeo under the bus, though:

During Mr. Trump's 2018 meeting with North Korea's leader, according to the book, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Mr. Bolton a note disparaging the president, saying, "He is so full of shit."

Wonder if "he is so full of shit" is the classified information the White House was trying so hard to keep secret. Oh well, we know now!

IS ANYBODY LISTENING? ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, DONALD!

And then of course, there are just the OMG DONALD TRUMP IS SO FUCKING STUPID moments in these excerpts. Like the time Trump asked John Kelly if Finland was part of Russia. And the time he wouldn't release a statement about the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, because it was "15 years ago."

And these from the Post , which take "fucking stupid" to the level of "stupidest fucking wannabe dictator ever":

Trump said invading Venezuela would be "cool" and that the South American nation was "really part of the United States." [...] And Trump told Xi that Americans were clamoring for him to change the constitutional rules to serve more than two terms, according to the book.

Yep, you betcha. Very cool, very legal, all of that.

He also describes a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey where Trump says journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: "These people should be executed. They are scumbags," Trump said, according to Bolton's account.

That's right, Trump said journalists should be executed, according to Bolton.

UKRAINE IF YOU'RE LISTENING!

Finally, Bolton writes extensively about the impeachment case against Trump, and seems to say Congress got his crimes against Ukraine just right. He just thinks the House did a really bad job at impeaching Trump, should have gone slower, and again, should have focused on so much more . From the Times :

On Aug. 20, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Trump "said he wasn't in favor of sending [Ukraine its aid] until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over." Mr. Bolton writes that he, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper tried eight to 10 times to get Mr. Trump to release the aid.

So there's that.

Hey, remember how badly Republican congressmen and senators did not want to hear from John Bolton? We think we are starting to see why.

Anyway, there's more where this came from, but we don't have it yet.

But you should know that the main idea, at least the one John Bolton wants you to take away, is that John Bolton did nothing wrong. The main idea Wonkette wants you to take away, on the other hand, is that John Bolton deserves to be kicked in the dick, and that if this book ends up taking down both him and Trump, we'll consider that a win-win for America.

The end.

OPEN THREAD!

[ Washington Post / New York Times / Wall Street Journal ]

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