Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says 'Putin was waiting' for Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO in his second term
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Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says 'Putin was waiting' for Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO in his second term
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- Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said Putin was "waiting" for Trump to withdraw the US from NATO.
- He previously warned that Trump would have withdrawn from the alliance if he'd won a 2nd term.
- Bolton also said Trump's "main interest" in Ukraine was trying to "find Hillary Clinton's computer server."
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was waiting for former President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization if he had won a second term.
Bolton made the remarks during a virtual event with the Washington Post on the Russian invasion of Ukraine , where Bolton mostly offered critiques of current President Joe Biden's foreign policy in the region. At the end of the event, he was asked by the Post's Michael Duffy about how close Trump came to withdrawing the country from NATO, a translantic security alliance that includes the United States, Canada, and most of Europe.
"I thought he put his foot over it, but at least he didn't withdraw then," said Bolton, who wrote in his memoir about Trump's consideration of withdrawing from NATO in 2018 . "In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO. And I think Putin was waiting for that."
Trump viewed NATO as a liability during his presidency, believing that European countries were not paying enough of their fair share of the burden of providing defense to the alliance. Bolton, a State Department official during the George W. Bush administration, was brought on to be Trump's national security advisor in 2018 only to be ousted a year and a half later .
Bolton's latest comments come just days after he told Newsmax that Trump "barely knew where Ukraine was," pushing back on a host who said the former president had been "tough on Russia."
Asked whether he was satisfied by how the Trump administration handled Ukraine, Bolton criticized his former boss.
"I think it went very badly," said Bolton. "It was hard to have discussions on geostrategic issues when the president's main interest was getting... Rudy Giuliani in to see [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky so they could go find Hillary Clinton's computer server.
He added that Ukraine's position in the "maelstrom of American presidential politics" in the last few years made it difficult for Zelensky to establish a proper relationship with the United States, which Bolton said was Ukraine's "potentially most important supporter."
Trump was impeached for the first time over his withholding of $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Zelensky to launch an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter over allegations of corruption.
Bolton said on Friday that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper were concerned by Trump's behavior at the time. "All of us felt that we needed to bolster Ukraine security, and were appalled at what Trump was doing," he said.
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The key word here is "waiting".
When I said this in an article last week all the right wingers here tried to jump on me. Now conservative John Bolton confirms what I was saying.
Putin was "waiting" for a Trump 2nd term, that is why he didnt attack Ukraine while trump was in office.
Tell us why this bit of non-news has any relevance today.
Ask Business Insider or Microsoft News, two news organizations that carried the story today.
So now the left believes John Bolton? Hell has literally frozen over.
Did Trump withdraw us from NATO? Do you have proof other than Bolton- who had a well known hatred for Trump (probably the only thing you two would ever agree on).
Which president was in charge when Putin invaded Ukraine?
The "But Trruuuummmmpppppp!!!!!" BS is getting damn old. Putin invaded Ukraine because the human fuck up machine that is currently in office made the country look weak by bowing to the Taliban and abandoning US citizens, green card holders, and special VISA holders in Afghanistan. Tell us, when is Brandon going to get those people out of Afghanistan? The entire planet is watching and waiting.
John didn't say that Trump withdrew the US from NATO. What a stupid comment. But what is very well known is that Trump sure talked about doing it every five minutes. There are links all over the place to videos etc. Jesus!
Putin invaded Ukraine because the human fuck up machine that is currently in office made the country look weak by bowing to the Taliban and abandoning US citizens, green card holders, and special VISA holders in Afghanistan. Tell us, when is Brandon going to get those people out of Afghanistan?
Oh. Brother. If you want to spout nonsense about Afghanistan, seed your own article, because it has nothing to do with this one.
In addition, you must be the last person on the planet to know that Putin wants Ukraine's natural resources, namely their energy and mineral reserves. It has nothing to do with President Biden or the Taliban or whatever the hell you are talking about.
Not only did Trump want to take the US out of NATO in his second term, I think he may have made a quid pro quo with Putin behind closed doors at Helsinki. The US out of NATO in exchange for a Trump Tower in Moscow after Trump was done being president.
Biden winning put an end to that.
Lol .... now that’s some funny shit there John.
Thx for the laugh!
What HAVEN'T some folks IMAGINED about Helsinki?
It is now bordering on the truly insane.
Just make whatever random shit up that seems to fit your perspective regardless of facts, throw the shit at the wall, and pray like hell something sticks THIS time.
Sad and pathetic.
It's plausible
No it isn’t.
It twists Trumps words and is nothing but TDS driven nonsense.
See #3 below if you are interested in the whole truth.
There's nothing random about it
Bolton isn’t the most convincing in this debate. The guy is nothing but a certifiable war hawk. Always has been.
That said and as noted in another seed, with Russia starting to knock on their door again for the first time since the wall came down, Germany finally agreed to pay their NATO mandated amount of GDP to defense. Too little to late? You decide.
It was all Trump was asking but I guess it took a Russian madman to convince our German partners to honor what they agreed to pay decades ago.
Keep on spinning John ......
John, I saw when you made this connection prior to the media reporting on it, and you were right. However, I hope you aren’t expecting anyone on the right here to eat crow. As I said in another article, these guys would call a photo of a mushroom cloud biased before they’d condemn the evil that launched the nuke. There is no meaningful debate here anymore.
Nah, Im just messing with them.
Lol ... yeah, sure you are.
Funny!
The goddamn nuke would be up their ass and they still would call it all bias