Donald Trump just found a whole new way to blow it
John Bolton’s upcoming book was likely going to be a minor annoyance at best. Neither Donald Trump’s allies nor his detractors care for him all that much. They didn’t care for Bolton when he worked in the administration and any chance he had to rehabilitate his worthless reputation as a warmonger went out the window when he chose not to testify during Trump’s impeachment trial, because book sales come before his own sense of patriotism.
When Bolton’s manuscript was finished, the Trump White House tried to fight against its publication by claiming that the book leaked classified information and was a national security risk. At the time, we all knew this wasn’t true and it was just his way of forestalling what would inevitably be out in the open. Now that the book is being published, the Department of Justice is suing to prevent its release on those grounds.
The problem is that Donald Trump got in his own way once again, tweeting that Bolton’s book is full of lies and fake stories. We’ve come to know this is usually code for something being entirely accurate, but by accusing Bolton of making the whole thing up, Trump is actually undercutting the case his Justice Department is trying to make. It was always a long shot that they would be able to keep the book from happening, but now it’s pretty much impossible.
Don’t tell that to Donald Trump though – he’s still somehow convinced that something can be inaccurate and still be classified. This not only magnifies the Bolton scandal, it makes it that much harder for Trump to fight off against other former staffers from leaking embarrassing stories or corroborating the ones in Bolton’s book. In this week, we saw that all Trump has to offer are empty threats and promises he can’t keep.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making