John Bolton just got what he deserved
When John Bolton refused to testify during impeachment proceedings because he wanted to wait until his book was ready for launch, he put his own lucrative multimillion dollar payday ahead of the safety of the American people. There was at least an outside chance Bolton’s devastating testimony could have pressured the GOP Senate into removing Trump. But Bolton punted, and the GOP acquitted him.
We’re presuming that John Bolton’s plan all along was to circle back once his book was finally released, and offer to testify in some ad hoc House hearing into Donald Trump’s scandals. The trouble is, Bolton’s stall tactic handed Trump the leverage to jump in and delay Bolton’s book by falsely claiming that large chunks of it were classified – something that Trump probably couldn’t have pulled off if Bolton had beaten him to the punch by simply testifying.
Now, according to Amazon, John Bolton’s book has been delayed again. It’s been pushed back to late June. The ongoing series of delays suggests that Donald Trump has indeed found a way to keep pushing the book back indefinitely, meaning Bolton may well never get to release it – at least not until after Trump is out of office, by which time no one will want to read about Trump’s antics anyway.
To be clear, Donald Trump is doing something really corrupt (and probably illegal) to keep getting John Bolton’s book delayed on national security grounds. It’s not as if Bolton was stupid enough to put actual classified information in his book. But Bolton was stupid enough to think that he could manipulate his way to a bigger payday by timing his testimony to his book launch, at the expense of American lives. Bolton is getting what he deserves. Also, Bolton just got outmaneuvered by an increasingly addled Donald Trump – which suggests that Bolton is even more of a disaster than we thought.
