Joining us now,
the former Trump
national security adviser, former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations,
former Trump supporter
turned critic of the former president.
Right now, John Bolton.
Ambassador,
thank you so much for joining us.
As you know, Trump has now
pleaded, as I just said,
not guilty twice
in 24 hours
in the classified documents
case down in Florida,
the January 6th case here in Washington.
How will history remember this moment
Well, I think it will.
It will remember through the reverse
prism of what
the outcome of this case
and the documents case turned out to be.
If he's convicted
This will be another significant
point in history.
But if he's acquitted,
the only thing
that anybody's going to remember
is that he's acquitted.
And that's
why as as correct
as this course of action
is, nobody should think that
that the indictment alone
achieves anything.
It doesn't achieve anything more
than simply being a prerequisite
to go to trial.
Well, the fact is that no,
no president
sitting or former has ever been
criminally charged along these lines.
This is a historic first
Yeah.
No president's ever
been convicted either.
That's the headline
that's going to matter.
It's like Nancy Pelosi famously saying
he will always be impeached.
Well, that's just wonderful
because he was always acquitted, too.
And the acquittal,
especially in the first impeachment
trial, made him even more convinced
than he was before,
that he was bulletproof
and that he could pretty much
do what he wanted.
So, you know, as Machiavelli
said, more or less,
you must either
caress a people or crush them.
And the way Trump
has been treated
so far by by by beating
these earlier charges
is he's been caressed
and he's been made more powerful,
certainly in his own mind.
So while I certainly agree
with both of the federal indictments,
I just say again,
they better get a conviction.
We shall see
what happens during the trial.
One aspect of yesterday's
hearing, as you know,
Ambassador, that clearly frustrated
Trump was the judge
who is presiding, referring to him
simply as Mr.
Trump, not Mr.
President,
as he's called, of course, at the golf
resorts and elsewhere.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, I think
I think that is
perfectly consistent with
with my take on Trump's personality.
But you know what
he translates that into immediately
is how am I going to get even
how am I going to turn this
to my advantage?
And I'm sure
while he was steaming at the moment,
it it was transmuted on the flight
on Trump one back to New Jersey
about how
he was going to make the most of it.
Many of Trump's 20, 24 Republican rivals
clearly have struggled
to counter his election.
Liz, I want you to listen to Governor Ron
DeSantis today.
He was asked
if the 2020 election was stolen.
Listen to this.
Was not an election
that was conducted
the way I think we want to
but that's different than saying
like Maduro stole votes
or something like that.
And I think those theories
you know proved to be
unsubstantial hatred.
Does that go far enough?
Why does it seem so difficult
for so many Republicans
to fully rebuke Trump on this issue?
Well, they can speak for themselves,
I think, as just a matter of pure
politics, forget,
you know,
morality and legality
and all that stuff,
just a matter of pure politics.
The person
who's going to take the nomination
of the Republican Party away from Trump
is the person who takes Trump
head on and rolls over in
And if you're not prepared
to say
that Trump's conduct was unacceptable,
that he may well have violated the law,
and that in any event, he's
not fit to be president as his first term
record shows,
you're not going to beat Trump
for the nomination.
So a number of these
Republican candidates,
I think, could win a general election
against Joe Biden
or any other Democratic nominee.
But to get there,
they can't go around Trump.
They can't ignore him.
They've got to go over him.
And until they get that mindset,
I think they're doomed to lose.
You know,
only a few of them have done that.
CNN has learned, Ambassador,
that top U.S.
officials fear
Vladimir Putin is waiting out the 2024
election, hoping that
if President Biden loses, the U.S.
will scale back its support for Ukraine.
As Trump's former
national security adviser
Does that disturb you
Well, it worries me
because of what Trump has said
about
Ukraine and frankly,
what he said about Naito.
But I think
Putin's strategy
is a little bit different.
I think he wants to see
if the Ukrainian spring offensive
now underway really changes
the map of the battlefield
in Ukraine to any great extent.
And if by sometime late September,
sometime in October,
when it's either spring or summer anymore
and things are still looking
pretty much like they're in gridlock,
I think Putin
will then
turn, as he should have done,
frankly, last September
and say, you know, this war is going on
long enough.
Let's have a cease fire
and negotiate a resolution
and then hope to turn the cease
fire line into a de facto new border.
And I worry that in Europe and frankly,
I worry in the White House
that the temptation
when to agree to negotiation
will we'll take control
and we will end up with the cease fire.
Russia will have a new border
with Ukraine.
We will see.
Ambassador John Bolton, thank you so much
for joining us.