Washington: “I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job,” President Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton told ABC News in an interview to promote his book, ‘The Room Where It Happened’.
The book is releasing on June 23 — which the White House is trying desperately to get stopped by court order — alleges that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for re-election help, obstructed justice, and was no match for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle,” Bolton told ABC.
In an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton, who resigned from the administration last September, wrote: “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility to China among the Democrats. Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. 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.”
Trump also told Xi he approved of building Chinese concentration camps for Uighur citizens. Ironically, on Wednesday he signed bill calling for sanctions against those responsible for the repression of Uighur Muslims in China.
Trump fired back at Bolton in a tweet Thursday: “The book is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!”
Bolton’s book also elaborated on the Ukraine scandal that was at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial early this year; Bolton wrote that Trump kept telling White House officials to withhold aid to the country as leverage for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Ukraine tried to take me down. I’m not f—ing interested in helping them,” the book quoted Trump as saying in May 2019, according to The Journal.
