Wait, John Bolton said WHAT?
On Tuesday, John Bolton appeared on CNN analyzing the latest January 6 Committee hearing. The two cents he offered was worth much less, as he succeeded only in promoting a flawed defense of Donald Trump while spotlighting his own arrogance. Bolton’s comments, cloaked in the authority of his experience as the twice-impeached President’s fourth National Security Advisor, amounted to Republicansplaining at its worst.
Although Bolton conceded that Trump “did unleash the rioters at the Capitol,” the crux of his argument was that planning a coup “takes a lot of work” and that Trump was incapable of pulling off such a feat. Instead, he insisted, Trump “was just stumbling around from one idea to another.” Employing an awkward Star Wars analogy, Bolton casually downgraded Trump’s culpability by calling his former boss a mere “disturbance in the Force” instead of the orchestrator of an “attack on our democracy.”
Of course, Bolton couldn’t be more accurate to describe Trump as highly incompetent, impatient, and capricious. “It’s rambling from one… idea to another; one plan that falls through, and another comes up,” he said. Indeed, throughout his failed presidency, Trump executed so much of his hateful agenda after much bumbling, starting with the Muslim ban he rushed out in January 2017.
Trump’s ham-fisted nature contributed only to the coup’s ultimate failure. Although it’s clear he didn’t plan the events of January 6 with great coherence and discipline, he nevertheless did plan for that day, as the January 6 Committee hearings have confirmed. As for the “lot of work” part that Bolton suggests is exculpatory, let’s not forget that people of varying competence levels, from the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to top government officials, contributed their efforts to help turn the insurrectionist buffoon’s dreams of staying in power into reality.
January 6, 2021 was the date to certify the election results after Trump’s myriad yet frivolous litigation efforts had failed. Nevertheless, Bolton laughably suggested that Trump ordered the rioters (some of whom were armed) to the Capitol merely to “buy more time to throw the matter back to the states to redo the issue,” and that it’s a “mistake” to claim this was somehow to “overthrow the Constitution.”
Bolton smugly cited his background “as somebody who has helped plan coups d’état, not here but other places” as authority for knowing that “it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [Trump] did.” Curiously, when Jake Tapper asked Bolton to clarify his comments, he cited a 2019 Venezuelan coup against President Nicolás Maduro—only to admit that the U.S. government didn’t have “all that much to do with it” and that it failed. John Bolton’s latest analysis is as flawed as his career.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month