-Well, President Trump said that he fired John Bolton
because he often disagreed with the advice that Bolton gave.
-Was he fired?
Did he get fired, or did he quit?
And did he leave the White House
because he disagreed with you in particular?
-John Bolton just texted me. -Oh.
-Just now. He's watching.
-Can you read it? -Yeah.
He said, "Let's be clear. I resigned."
And I said, "Do you mind if I say that?"
while you were talking. And he wrote "Yes."
-The president's entitled to the staff
that he wants at any moment.
This is a staff person who works directly
for the President of the United States,
and he should have people that he trusts and values
and whose efforts and judgments benefit him
in delivering American foreign policy.
-This did not entirely come out of the blue, though.
I don't think anyone saw that it was going to happen today.
-Last night, we were told he would be here today.
-I'm never surprised.
-Well, let me ask -- -And I don't mean that
on just this issue.
-It appears that their differences were not
so much ideological as they were tactical,
particularly in the big three countries involving policy
towards Iran, North Korea, and, most recently, Afghanistan.
He was very hawkish.
On Iran, for example, the president openly said
that he wanted to negotiate with President Rouhani of Iran.
-Would you agree to meet with President Rouhani?
-If the circumstances were correct or right,
I would certainly agree to that.
Look, Iran is a country with tremendous potential.
We're not looking for regime change.
-John Bolton, in contrast, openly called for regime change.
-There's a lot we can do, and we should do it.
Our goal should be regime change in Iran.
-He thought that the Iranian government is irredeemably evil
and there was no point in talking to them.
In North Korea, President Trump would sort of wave
aside a number of missile tests
that North Korea continued making,
even as they were holding talks with the administration.
-Short-range missiles -- we never made
an agreement on that.
I have no problem. We'll see what happens.
But these are short-range missiles.
They're very standard.
-Unlike President Trump, Bolton was very critical of them
and said that they violated UN Security Council Resolutions.
But it was really the Afghanistan policy
that sort of brought the disagreements
and the internal divisions into the public.
-Are peace talks with the Taliban dead?
-They're dead. They're dead.
As far as I'm concerned, they're dead.
-As Zalmay Khalilzad, the State Department's
special envoy for peace talks with the Taliban --
as he came up with a draft agreement,
Bolton asked to see a copy of it, reportedly.
And they refused to send him over a draft of the agreement.
They said if he wanted to, he could come in and read it,
but they would not give him a copy to take out.
He just didn't think that the deal that was being negotiated
by Khalilzad was a good one.
And he was quite open and vocal about that.
So, there was a point last month when there was a meeting
at the White House between all the principles,
really, in national security in the administration.
And initially Bolton was not even invited to it.
You had the head of the CIA.
You had Mike Pompeo.
You had a number of officials, but not John Bolton.
And Bolton's aides apparently appealed to Mick Mulvaney,
the Chief of Staff.
And so he finally did get to come,
but he had to sort of, you know, push his way into this meeting.
So, he was completely being sidelined.
-The acting National Security Advisor is Charlie Kupperman.
And the fact is, the President of the United States
asked John Bolton last night for his resignation.
It was delivered today.
John Bolton's priorities and policies
just don't line up with the president's.
And any sitting president has the right
to put someone in that position that can carry out his agenda.
That became no longer tenable, so the president made a change.
Thanks.