>> John Bolton is no longer working for the Trump administration.
Now, Trump himself attempted to make it appear as though he fired Bolton.
But of course, as with anything Trump says, it's a lie.
Now let me give you the details of what Trump tweeted, and then we're gonna give you the
reality of how this all went down.
Trump said today, via Twitter, I informed John Bolton last night that his services are
no longer needed at the White House.
I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration and therefore
I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning.
I thank John very much for his service.
I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
Well, that's not quite how things went down.
In fact, we found out about the reality on Fox news, of all places.
Take a look.
>> Then of course, we heard from the just fired John Bolton saying that no, it didn't
actually play out that way.
>> I offered to resign last night and President Trump said let's talk about it tomorrow.
>> John Bolton just texted me 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.
So John Bolton, he just told me, texted me to say I resigned.
>> And right prior to that, John Bolton also tweeted, quote, I offered to resign last night
and President Trump said let's talk about it tomorrow.
>> No, I broke up with you.
>> Yeah.
>> Insane.
>> You keep for me, I quit, except the opposite.
>> Yeah, I do like like, I just, I picture them talking and then going really poorly
and Trump says let's talk about it tomorrow.
It's like, okay, maybe we can save this relationship.
And then of course.
>> It's just like- >> He's been cheating on him with Mike Pompeo.
>> It's the pettiest, Trump is many bad things.
Hey, he's all the bad things but petty is what he's the most, I think.
>> Well, for a guy who seems to care a lot about optics and his own image, he's managed
to be the worst president in US history.
I mean, everyone is always criticizing him, with the exception of power hungry members
of his own administration and right wing media.
>> Well, optics for him, is not the traditional way that we think, you know, how someone is
supposed to appear presidential.
He wants to consistently appear strong, but he's too dumb to actually appear strong, so
he just appears petulant and petty.
So he's not bright enough to pull off the PR stunt that he's trying to consistently
do, which is that of a competent president, a strong president.
And he doesn't know how to actually maneuver it, because he's not actually that bright.
>> Yeah.
>> Right, now Bolton no longer working in a Trump administration is not a bad thing.
>> It's a great thing.
>> Bolton is a notable war hawk, he is a warmonger.
It was very clear that there were disagreements between himself and Donald Trump when he came
to possibly invading Iran.
And I'm glad that Trump called off an airstrike in response to Iran shooting down a US drone.
I mean, in any potential conflict the United States has, Bolton has attempted to push both
Donald Trump and successfully, previous administrations into more war.
So I'm glad that Bolton is out, but that's not to say that he wouldn't be replaced by
someone who's even worse.
You never know who Trump can replace him with.
>> It should be obvious, but let's bear in mind who put John Bolton in the position he
was in, Donald Trump.
I would assume, knowing all you need to know about john Bolton's reputation, which is just
that he's never met a group of non-White people that he wants to blow up, and yet he chose
him.
>> You know why- >> And so you don't get points, you just get
back up to zero from the negative you went into when you chose John Bolton as your advisor.
And the reason why he chose John Bolton is because they agreed on tearing up the raw
nuclear deal.
But they disagreed on what to do moving forward because Trump surprisingly, wanted to take
a more diplomatic role in negotiating with Iran, whereas Bolton just wanted to invade.
>> Yeah, because no one who isn't this much of a warmonger doesn't wants to invade Iran,
it's four times the size of Iraq.
We already know how much of a disaster that was.
And apparently, when you read more into it, people like Steve Mnuchin were massaging Trump's
ego, basically saying that you didn't want to go into the Iraq war but Bolton did.
So he's been wrong in this, why would you trust him?
And Mnuchin didn't really like that he was pushing for the tariffs, and all of that.
So Trump's, it wasn't his anti-interventionist tendencies that caused him to fire Bolton.
Which is ideally what we want, it was his ego per usual.
>> Yeah and I remain incredibly worried about what's going to happen with Iran.
This one thing like, as you rightly pointed out, he canceled the air strike after okaying
the air strike.
>> That's right.
>> And he did rip up the Iran nuclear cords which materially increases the odds of a war
with them, and also them developing the nuclear weapons that we used as the pretext for war
with them.
So I mean, look, I guess Trump is less of a hawk than John Bolton, but so is virtually
every human that's ever lived.
So I don't know how much credit he deserves.
>> I mean, Lindsey Graham might be.
Either on the same page, in terms of hawkishness, or even more hawkish.
>> McCain was rough too but, yeah.
>> McCain was rough, but he's not in the equation anymore.
I do wanna go to this next video, because it features Pompeo, Mike Pompeo.
And just pay close attention to his tone.
He seems almost jovial.
And he does draw attention to some disagreements.
Take a look.
>> Did John Bolton fire, did he get fired or quit and then he leaves the White House
because he disagreed with you in particular over toxic?
>> So last night, the President asked for Ambassador Bolton's resignation as I understand
it, it was received this morning.
>> Was it because of this disagreement?
>> I'll leave it to the President to talk about, the reasons he made decision.
But I would say this, the President is entitled to the staff that he wants.
I don't talk of the inner workings of how this all goes.
We all give our candid opinions.
There are many times Ambassador Bolton and I disagreed, that's to be sure.
But that's true for lots of people with whom I interact with.
My mission is that it's always to make sure as I run the Department of State is to deliver
America's diplomacy.
I know everyone's talked about this for an awfully long time.
There were definitely places that Ambassador and I pulled the night at different views
about how we should proceed.
>> Well, he has Mnuchi going over his shoulder.
Those were the two amigos who basically ousted him, and they're just grinning to each other
like talking behind the scenes.
We got the guy out.
>> It's, I mean, their days are numbered.
We all know how Trump operates, we all know that Trump has loyalty to no one.
Mike Pompeo might think he's in Trump's good graces today by sucking up to him and giving
him everything he wants.
But one small, even misconception that Trump has toward Pompeo.
Let's say Pompel might appear to be a little too overly ambitious within the administration,
you are gone.
It's a very thin line, Pompeo.
So you might be snickering and laughing now but again, your days are numbered.
Everyone's days are numbered if you are in the Trump administration.
But one conversation I wanted to have was Pompeo says I think the President should be
able to surround himself with a bunch of Yes Men who enable him to do everything he wants.
And so my question is, look, I think that it makes sense to have members of your cabinet
have a similar philosophy maybe, a similar ideology, worldview, whatever it is.
But you want to surround yourself with people who are willing to challenge you because no
human being is perfect.
So let's take Trump out of the equation, let's just put president perfect in that position.
Now even president perfect has flaws.
No one's actually perfect.
I know that I'm not perfect, I know that I like to be challenged on some of my pre-conceived
notions because that helps me grow, that helps me make better decisions.
In the executive branch, it doesn't make sense to surround yourself with a bunch of Yes Men
if you actually wanna run government correctly.
>> Well, that was part of the criticism of Bush, right?
It was that he surrounded himself consistently with Yes Men because he was too intellectually
incurious to actually ask these large questions.
It's the same thing with Trump times a million, he's the most intellectually incurious man
on the face of the planet.
And when you look more and read more the details about the firing of Bolton, Bolton and Pompeo
apparently, largely agreed about how to handle Iran, how to handle North Korea, but disagreed
on how to handle Trump, how they handle him.
So basically, Bolton wanted to push, and push, and push him to be more belligerent, and Pompeo
wanted to be more sleazy about it.
Even their end goals were still the same, more war, more brown Muslims bombed and killed
indiscriminately, more belligerence towards North Korea, more military industrial complex
getting enriched, and more donors getting their pockets filled.
>> Yeah, you mentioned them differing on how to handle Trump.
I mean, he demonstrated that he knows how he's supposed to handle Trump there.
He knows exactly what happened with the resignation versus firing, but he knows if he says that
he'll probably be fired.
He can't acknowledge reality because he knows he's working for a four year old in a really
old body.
That's it, really.
He gets that.
You asked, wouldn't you want a team of people who would question you if you wanted to run
a government properly?
Yes, if that's want you wanted to do.
But we know that for Trump, I mean, is that in the top 20 of his priorities?
>> Let me just be clear, I mean, you want people who might challenge you on certain
policy proposals or executive actions you might wanna take.
I mean, no one wants to surround themselves with people who constantly question everything
they do or challenge everything they do.
But in this case, I mean look at what Trump has successfully done.
He immediately gets rid of people who challenge him, he gets rid of people who he deems too
ambitious, who might want to outshine him in the administration.
Just to give you a little history lesson, and it's very recent history, Trump has had
three National Security Advisors, Bolton, Michael Flynn, and HR McMaster.
>> In his defense, one of them was a criminal so he couldn't hold on him for very long.
Yeah, well, yeah, easily identifiable criminal under our system.
>> Fair enough.
>> And there's been nothing but chaos within his administration when it comes to other
roles.
Trump has also churned out two Homeland Security secretaries, John Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen,
and a National Security Agency director, Mike Rogers.
He's lost a deputy national security adviser, K.T McFarland and an ambassador to the UN,
Nikki Haley.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and his deputy, Sue Gordon, left their posts
last month.
So again, it's complete and utter chaos within this administration and it just continues
on and on.
If you don't agree with everything Trump wants, he's gonna come for you.
>> Yeah, and everybody should have predicted it because we knew from his business career,
this is how he was.
He just wants Yes Men, which is again like, this is something I’ve been saying for two
years now.
The Trump supporters say that, Trump is an example of a strong alpha person.
He’s literally a demonstration of daily basis of every way that a man can be weak.
And your inability to have your views questioned is not strength.
Lincoln had his team of rivals, his got team of rodents, so that’s all that’s left
on this sinking ship.
Like, you should be able to surround yourself with people who are smarter in their areas
than you are.
It doesn't mean that you have to follow what they say, but you should at least listen to
their advice.
Trump, when he was talking, I think it was about Afghanistan, he said I take my own advice.
What does that even mean?
I don't know.
The only thing it means is we have a pathetic president, that's all that it means in practice.