Morlock’s review of THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED, a 2020 memoir by John Bolton of his time in the Trump White House, In One Word or Less™...

“Aight!” ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s certainly more intriguing than the book I read right before it: DUNE. (That one gets a “Trite!” ⭐️⭐️)

Both are works of political shenanigans. DUNE, I grant you, has more colorful prose; also drug abuse, spaceships, and sand worms. THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED has men talking in rooms about foreign policy. Men talking in this room or that office or the other hotel conference hall.

John Bolton is a lawyer, and THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED is his deposition, cobbled from yellow pad notes and fleshed out memories (and filtered through government censors to remove classified intel). It reads like a Jack Friday monologue: “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Well, the facts as Bolton saw them, presented in a carefully manicured case to omit any details disputatious to his narrative. “Promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not a lawyer’s purview. More like, “To tell the best truth for my client.”

I fail to this work changing anyone’s mind. Liberals and Democrats will glom on to Bolton’s many examples of Trump ignorance while trashing the author himself as an unjailed war criminal. Classical conservatives will nod that Bolton, a former Bush 41 & Bush 43 statesman, did his best to install hardline policies against globalization and dangerous regimes, to be foiled by a lawless man-child. Trump fans will bristle at any intimation that their guy isn’t Heaven-sent and claim it’s all fake news from a money-grubbing liar with a stupid mustache.

All’s I know is, Bolton’s sand-dry tales of Trump’s meetings with North Korea’s dictator and fawning over him was some fascinating shit, while Frank Herbert’s story of men talking about Paul the Space Jesus leading the colonist uprising was a crime of boredom. DUNE is DULL spelled sideways.

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS spans John Bolton’s term as National Security Advisor (April 2018–September 2019), and each chapter covers a specific topic. Some moments appear in multiple sections as the timelines intersect. Bolton assumes the reader has working knowledge of not only American political structure and recent history, but also Bolton himself. If all you know is the mustache and glasses-adjusting, here’s a primer:

Conservative. Republican. Personal attorney. Former Fox News Commentator. This is his third book. Ambassador to the United Nations (2005–06). Two prior posts in State Department. Twice married, one daughter. Immovable evaluations of the media and Democrats. Fiercely protectionist of America. Constitutionalist, even when it works against his side:

Trump was obsessed with the idea of prosecuting [John] Kerry for violating the Logan Act, a rarely invoked 1799 law prohibiting private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Without doubt, Kerry was trying to persuade Iran to stay in the [Obama’s] nuclear deal and wait Trump out until 2020, when a Democrat would assuredly win election and revive it. That said, prosecuting him was a nonstarter. The Logan Act violates the First Amendment and, as a criminal statute, is unconstitutionally void for vagueness […] I tried early on explaining to Trump the likelihood the Logan Act would be declared unconstitutional if tested in court, but I failed utterly. [p. 339]

Bolton’s reputation of always lobbying for war is exaggerated. (It’s not “always,” but often enough.) His expertise lies in international relations, though he is thoroughly disinterested in helping other nations at America’s expense, claiming “the US should be immediately unshackled” from many treaties:

Trump received a standing ovation while he actually unsigned the [Obama-era Arms Trade Treaty] right in front of the [NRA convention]. Trump also unsigned the Paris Agreement on climate change, a move I supported. That deal had all of the real-world impact on climate change of telling your prayer beads and lighting candles in church (which someone will try to forbid soon because of the carbon footprint of all those burning candles). [p. 159]

Note the ol’ “they’ll ban X next” farce, with X being some absurd example of leftist intrusion? Such gambits play well in the right wing’s Victim Industrial Complex: “They’re coming for you, Barbara! And your Jesus too!” Such slights permeate the text—Bolton refers to the 44th president as merely “Obama,” seldom using “Barack” and only twice with “President” preceding). The man is a conservative, after all; I found these barbs as dabs of flavorful, if petulant, disrespect, but fair game in a memoir.

That said, I claim the “last name only” style pervades the book as a whole. Simply using Trump or Obama is fine; we know them. Others are mentioned so often they’re hard to forget: Kim, Pompeo, Putin, Kelly. Often, the many other last names lost me, and I paid strict attention.

Quick, who’s Dunford? Zelensky? Mattis? Mulvaney? What roles did they fill?

At the first mention in each chapter, subchapter, and every two pages, editorial should’ve added full names with titles. Even if the whole chapter features “Kelly,” it’s nice to remind the reader that’s “John Kelly,” Trump’s “Chief of Staff,” formerly “Secretary of Homeland Security,” and before that “Marine Corps general.”

Bolton’s text similarly skips all mention of anyone’s fashion, personal style, religion, or sexual preferences. This includes Trump’s notorious history of vow-breaking. The settings lack diegetic detail. I don’t need Robert Jordan’s panoramic paintings of the settings, but a few extra words would’ve been nice. When Bolton DOES mention the world exists, like that snowfall which held up his car service, it’s a wet splat of piquancy on the dry sand dune that is THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED.

And God bless him, John Bolton wasn’t too chickenshit a writer to avoid humor. His joking metaphors are so delightfully clunky:

The G7 meetings and similar international gatherings had a rhyme and reason at one point in history, and at times do good work, but in many respects, they have simply become self-licking ice-cream cones. They’re there because they’re there. [p. 94]

I laughed long and hard at that one. Here’s another:

[Future Ukraine President] Volodymyr Zelensky [was] leading the polls but not regarded as serious, because, after all, he was just an actor… (For liberal readers, that’s a joke. Ronald Reagan, one of America’s greatest Presidents, was also an actor.) [p. 403]

That got a snort for its condescension. Another right-wing favorite: treating leftists like know-nothing ’tards and daring them to get upset.

Bolton’s balls-out style and hardline point of view are not unique, and therefore a necessary part of any political discussion. Even the most liberal government should have this voice somewhere, so a chief executive can hear all sides before making decisions. There ARE situations where Bolton’s bomb-dropping is the right course of action.

But—and this is a very important distinction—John Bolton is not a mercenary. He would never have taken the National Security Advisor role in Obama’s White House, not for any money. His work wouldn’t produce enough “yes” results, so why bother. Once this became the actual case in TRUMP’S White House, when “no” was all POTUS gave him (besides insults and disrespect), Bolton got a resignation letter typed up. He went in knowing how it would end:

[…] why accept the job? Because America faced a very dangerous international environment, and I thought I knew what needed to be done. I had strong views on a wide range of issues, developed during prior government service and private­sector study. And Trump? No one could claim by this point not to know the risks in store, up close, but I also believed I could handle it. Others may have failed for one reason or another, but I thought I could succeed. Was I right? Read on. [p. 36]

Bolton soothed President Joffrey right off the bat with a promise to be a servant, not a rogue. His job was to pitch an angle on international affairs. If Trump bought it, fine. If Trump balked and wanted something else, Bolton would give the President what he wanted. This is a decent interpretation of any Executive Branch process, and a similar memoir under a different president might have been as boring as DUNE.

With Trump, Bolton walked a tightrope over a constant circus crowd performing inside a dumpster that was ever on fire.

Trump likes people or he doesn’t. Don’t we all? But he tells you as much. And tells others as much, and tells others ABOUT OTHERS who like them or not, and he tells ALL THIS TO THE WORLD through interviews and Twitter.

“What do you think of [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis?” Trump asked, in line with his management style, which almost no one believed was conducive to building trust and confidence among his subordinates. But he did it all the time. And only a fool would not assume that if he asked me questions about Mattis, he was surely asking others about me. I gave a partial answer, which was both true and important: I said Mattis was “good at not doing what he didn’t want to do” and that he had “a high opinion of his own opinion.” [p. 216]

The former military generals of Trump’s staff, the “axis of adults,” often worked behind his back to reign him in. For his entire adult life, Trump has dealt with people who don’t like or trust him (but want to do business or use his celebrity)—and the guy LIVES to show them up. Even when such behavior is deleterious to smart office management:

Trump was off, explaining that he didn’t trust Mattis and how tired he was of constant press stories about Mattis’s outwitting Trump. I didn’t say it to Trump, but this was the biggest self-inflicted wound by the “axis of adults.” They thought themselves so smart they could tell the world how smart they were, and Trump wouldn’t figure it out. They were not as smart as they thought. [p. 216]

Secretary Mattis quit when Trump demanded an immediate withdraw of troops in Syria, an action that stranded our longtime Kurdish allies. (“Betrayed” is how many termed it.) For many, especially former military, the decision to stay or quit raged ever on. Bolton writes that John Kelly, then-Chief of Staff and like Mattis a former Marine general, feared any unchecked lunacy:

“I’ve commanded men in combat,” he said, “and I’ve never had to put up with shit like that.” […]

I could see his resignation coming, so I asked, “But what is the alternative if you resign?”

Kelly said, “What if we have a real crisis like 9/11 with the way he [Trump] makes decisions?”

I asked, “Do you think it will be better if you leave? At least wait until after the election. If you resign now, the whole election could go bad.”

“Maybe it would be better that way,” he answered bitterly.

So I said, “Whatever you do will be honorable, but there’s nothing positive about the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders having more authority.”

He answered, “I’m going out to Arlington,” presumably to visit his son’s grave, which he did at serious times. We knew this because it happened so often. [p. 212]

Kelly’s son Robert, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan by a land mine. Bolton later notes that Gen. Kelly’s premonition of Trump’s response to a “real crisis” came true, twice: the standoff in Iran, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bolton admits to joining the “axis of adults” in pre-meeting strategies so they could get on the same page and instruct the fragile President without making him feel dumb or lectured to. When Trump wanted the USA out of NATO, Bolton used the coming mid-term elections to put a stop to it:

There were only fifty-one Republican Senators, and we didn’t want to lose any of them because of threats to [leave] NATO. [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and I agreed the two of us alone should present this case to Trump, with no generals present, so Trump didn’t think the “axis of adults” was ganging up on him again. [p. 126]

Bored yet?

If so, I warned you. THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED is literally nothing but men talking. Virtually all white men (the only non-white ones are Asian). Bolton does not mention race in any form except once, and it’s Trump who brings it up:

[Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph] Dunford kept trying to get Trump to focus on specific options along a graduated ladder of possible responses [to an Iranian attack], but, somehow, we veered off to South Africa and what Trump was hearing about the treatment of white farmers, asserting he wanted to grant them asylum and citizenship. [p. 346]

The only women with prominence in the story are German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Americas’ UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Bolton did not like Haley, but it’s speculative to assign a level of sexism to that opinion; Bolton once held Haley’s job and it bothered him how she’d seek her own press attention and work behind the backs of the fellas:

At 11:05, Pompeo called, bouncing off the walls. He said he had called Haley, told her what we had agreed, and that she had also agreed. Then, as he learned subsequently, she immediately called Trump to complain. She read Trump a completely different set of talking points, which Trump accepted. Pompeo wanted a conference call with her and me to get everyone on the same page, but before the call could be arranged, Trump called Pompeo to say Haley’s talking points were fine and that he didn’t want to be hammered in the press for being too soft. Pompeo and I were perfectly happy to have a stronger statement we could attribute to Trump, but we both knew that Haley was motivated by her desire not to get hammered in the press. [p. 406]

Bolton claims to have skin too thick to care how the press hammered him, assigning a mutual distaste and only addressing reporters directly when forced to.

Would Bolton leak? Possibly. Despite this claim of innocence …

[Trump] was furious he was being portrayed as a fool, not that he put it that way. He said [to me], “A lot of people don’t like you. They say you’re a leaker and not a team player.” I wasn’t about to let that go. I said I’d been subject to a campaign of negative leaks against me over the past several months, which I would be happy to describe in detail, and I’d also be happy to tell him who I thought the leaks were coming from. (Mostly, I believed the leaks were being directed by Pompeo and [Office of Management and Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney.) As for the claim I was a leaker, I urged him to look for all the favorable stories about me in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere, which often revealed who was doing the leaking, and he would find none. [p. 433]

… I see no reason to believe Bolton here. If it suited his end or some policy goal, he would absolutely leak to a publication that despised him (or have an underling do so) knowing he could play this very card: eh, it’s the Post and the Times, man, you know they hate me, I’d never deal with such scum.

Notable by its absence in the text is any judgment on Trump’s disqualifying foibles—his many bankruptcies, his clear conflict with the Emoluments Clause. Whether Bolton agrees or disagrees that the President should divest of income sources that offer potential conflicts, he properly mentions going through said process himself. Trump’s other “famous” characteristics, like his hair, makeup fetish, hands, high-caloric meal preferences, teetotalism, and alleged Adderall abuse, aren’t broached either.

The President’s work habits, attention span, and decision-making (and remaking) are addressed in spades. Bolton notes the format of daily intelligence briefings of past administrations: Bush 41 held three or four meetings every day at 8 am, with the CIA Director, State Dept., the NSA, the Joint Chiefs if needed … every potential threat was analyzed and documented, options were discussed, strategy assigned, and cover stories for the press written.

According to Bolton—and many others—Trump don’t do that crap. He doesn’t leave his room until almost noon, spending hours watching cable news and tweeting and making phone calls. The daily security briefings quickly became twice-weekly because Trump got bored. When he DID have meetings, they were like barroom discussions:

 Trump’s favorite way to proceed was to get small armies of people together, either in the Oval or the Roosevelt Room, to argue out all these complex, controversial issues. Over and over again, the same issues. Without resolution, or even worse, one outcome one day and a contrary outcome a few days later. The whole thing made my head hurt. Even where there were occasional areas of agreement, it did not afford a basis from which to develop broader policy. [p. 265]

For all the shit Bill Clinton rightly got for holding long meetings where everyone got a say and no definite solution was reached, Bolton shows Slick Willie’s got nothing on Trump. And let’s be real, this sort of hashing out the issues behind closed doors is fine. It’s how decisions are made.

With someone in charge who doesn’t understand the stakes, who constantly switches opinions or simply gives up on a topic when he can’t win or it looks bad … and who then DOES ALL THAT AGAIN IN PUBLIC, via an interview that contradicts a press briefing that tells a different story than his tweets …

Well. The media didn’t invent the “Trump’s White House as chaos incarnate” narrative out of whole cloth. And John Bolton’s book isn’t breaking new ground there either. This surrounds a man whose whole life has been a study in public image construction: Trump never failed to brag on his genetic superiority, endless successes, and honest strength. Trump loves to talk about how Trump is a proactive guy:

[He] recounted how with the women he had dated, he never liked to have them break up with him; he always wanted to be the one doing the breaking up. (“Very revealing,” said [Chief of Staff John] Kelly when I told him later.) [p. 82]

He is the “decider,” as George W. Bush would say. Yet one who eschews direct confrontation, firing staff by phone, proxy, or through Twitter, hiding in his basement bunker. After an Iranian missile downed an American Global Hawk drone, Bolton and others advised Trump to fire a retaliatory strike. The text shows how quickly Trump’s mind was changed by an estimate of fatalities:  

Trump said he had been told by someone unnamed there might be a hundred fifty Iranian casualties. “Too many body bags,” said Trump, which he was not willing to risk for an unmanned drone. “Not proportionate,” he said again. Pompeo tried to reason with him, but he wasn’t having it. Saying we could always strike later, Trump cut the discussion off, repeating he didn’t want to have a lot of body bags on television. I tried to change his mind, but I got nowhere. […] In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do. It called to mind [former Chief of Staff John] Kelly’s question to me: what would happen if we ever got into a real crisis with Trump as President? Well, we now had one, and Trump had behaved bizarrely, just as Kelly had feared. [p. 364]

Instead of taking this action, or any action, Trump got on Twitter and told the above story to the world. Joint Chiefs Chair Dunford bemoaned this as giving Iran a pass on similar, future attacks:

Dunford then said, “And the tweets this morning. He’s telling the Iranians, ‘Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt Americans.’ That means they can do everything else they want.” That was exactly right. [p. 368]

Bolton says that Twitter is the way of the world now, a very effective tool to get one’s view or narrative straight to the public. He cites many examples of how the President undermined carefully laid plans (or even his own policies) with overemotional Twitter rants. Twitter stops being a tool of governance and becomes deliberate bed-wetting, leaving diplomats and department heads scrambling for clean sheets.

As much as the President embraces his Twitter voice to the world, his favorite two-way communication is the “personal relationship.”

We all need them. We see dysfunctional ones around us, people being manipulated or letting business get in the way of personal affairs. It infuriates Bolton how often Trump lets personal affairs get in the way of business:

Trump stopped an anodyne statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia, a completely unforced error. Russia would have ignored it. […] This was typical of Trump, who in June 2019 also blocked a draft statement on the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. […] Trump seemed to think that criticizing the policies and actions of foreign governments made it harder for him to have good personal relations with their leaders. This was a reflection of his difficulty in separating personal from official relations. I’m not aware of any case where Russia or China refrained from criticizing the United States for fear of irritating our sensitive leaders. [p. 166]

Another example, again regarding China and Trump’s relationship with its president, Xi Jinping:

Trump’s reflex effort to talk his way out of anything, however, even a public-health crisis, only undercut his and the nation’s credibility, with his statements looking more like political damage control than responsible public-health advice. One particularly egregious example was a news report that the Administration tried to classify certain public-health information regarding the United States on the spurious excuse that China was involved.

Of course China was involved, which is a reason to disseminate the information broadly, not restrict it. This, Trump was reluctant to do throughout the crisis, for fear of adversely affecting the elusive definitive trade deal with China, or offending the ever-so-sensitive Xi Jinping. [p. 285]

Bolton alleges the President utilized his personal relationship with Xi to ask for help with his re-election. Trump also asks his opposite numbers to call him so they can talk. Sounds innocuous, but this creates an international image of the United States begging for attention and willing to negotiate everything, far from its usual standard of America setting the pace and direction of worldwide policy:

Trump, almost alone among world leaders, never saw these bids for conversations as weakening our overall position, although others, friend and foe alike, saw them exactly that way. Trump couldn’t stop himself: “I’m a talker, I like to talk.” Grand strategy in the Trump Administration. [p. 336]

And he would talk to anyone, even bad actors leading rogue states who shouldn’t be legitimized with direct chats. Hard to believe Trump once offered to host the Taliban. Here, in Washington D.C.

There was no way to trust the Taliban and no enforcement mechanism. This was not a New York real estate deal. […] Trump posed what was always his key question: “How bad will this deal make me look? The Democrats would trash a great agreement.”

[…] Then Trump blew the whole meeting away by saying, “I want to speak to the Taliban. Let them come to Washington.” I could not have been happier that I was in a secure room deep in Eastern Europe rather than in the Sit Room when I heard that statement.

When the President asked his number two what he thought, Mike Pence did a great job in saying “no” without embarrassing his boss:

Pence replied carefully, “We should reflect before we make that decision. They have abused and oppressed their people. Have they actually changed?”

Trump then referred to Billy Graham’s grandson, a major who had served in Afghanistan, who said, “We took their land.”

“Why is he only a major?” Trump asked Dunford. “He’s good-looking, right from central casting.” [p. 395]

Despite the widespread resistance to the idea, plans were made to host the Taliban leaders … in early September.

[…] once Trump met with [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani and the Taliban, he would own this deal beyond any chance of separating himself from it when things went wrong. In fact, commentary was already growing about how bad the underlying deal was, even though no one outside the Administration knew anything about a Taliban meeting, let alone one at Camp David. […]

Moreover, if the meeting proceeded, it would be on September 8, three days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda, to which the Taliban had given aid and comfort. How could anyone have missed that?

Bolton has little patience in negotiating with our allies, much less terrorists. After a Taliban attack killed ten people in Afghanistan, his gruff disagreement helped sour the President on the whole affair:

Trump said, “Don’t take the meeting. Put out a statement that says, ‘We had a meeting scheduled, but they killed one of our soldiers and nine others, so we canceled it.’ There should be a cease-fire, or I don’t want to negotiate. We should drop a bomb, hit ’em hard. If they can’t do a cease-fire, I don’t want an agreement.”

 Bolton and Pompeo later agreed not to issue any statement, as the Taliban’s proposed visit was not public knowledge. Trump, unable to contain himself, went ahead and volunteered the entire story on Twitter:

 On Saturday evening, September 7, with no warning, Trump tweeted: “Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to…

“…an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” [p. 398]

Given how Trump cozied up to Putin and Kim, perhaps we dodged a bullet here; who knows how Trump would’ve acted in talks with the Taliban? Would he fawn over them, compete with them, try to be friends? Would they butter him up? Write him beautiful letters?

It’s a successful tactic.

Welp, time to talk about Trump’s bestie, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Kim quickly saw how exploitable Trump’s “personal relationship” would be, used it to gain a path to lessened economic sanctions, reduced military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea, and a legitimized voice in world politics.

Kim got all this in exchange for pillow talk. E.g., nothing.

If Bolton has a professional axe to grind in writing THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED, this is it. North Korea is on Bolton’s shortlist (with Iran) of countries that not only shouldn’t be pandered to or given respect, but could be justifiably invaded or bombed into submission. The DPRK is a long simmering to the US, he argues, possessing primitive nuclear weapon capability and working on missiles to that can (now) delivering a bomb to South Korea and Japan, and (soon) the American West Coast. Negotiating with Kim without his first giving up those nukes is, as Bolton loves to say, “a nonstarter.”

For all Bolton’s trash talk of the weak sanctions in Obama’s North Korea deal, for all the “noble effort” excuses he makes over George W. Bush’s six-country sit-down, I feel after reading this book that Bolton would easily take either limp scenario over Trump’s immediate offer to meet Kim in person.

It’s very bad strategy, Bolton insists.

We often hear, sarcastically or no, that Trump plays “3D chess” with the world, operating on an intelligence level so far ahead that others don’t even know they’re being beaten. This analogy echoes poker’s “multi-level thinking” put forth in David Sklansky’s excellent (“Tight!” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) book, NO LIMIT HOLD ’EM—THEORY AND PRACTICE:

Level 1: What do I have?

Level 2: What do they have?

Level 3: What do they think I have?

Level 4: What do they think I think they have?

Level 5: What do they think I think they think I have?

Applied to the United States and North Korea, here’s how it looks:

Level 1: What leverage does the USA have?

Level 2: What leverage does the DPRK have?

Level 3: What does the DPRK think the USA wants?

Level 4: What does the DPRK think the USA thinks the DPRK wants?

Level 5: What does the DPRK think the USA thinks the DPRK thinks the USA wants?

C’mon, man. Trump ain’t operating on ANY of those levels. He’s stuck here:

Level 0: no thinking.

This level is called “tilt” by poker players, when they are emotionally supercharged from big losses or wins and play by primal urge instead of sound strategy.

That, or they simply don’t understand how to play the game.

Trump said he had known from his first day in office that, for him, deal-making or negotiating such as this summit would be easy. [p. 102]

When it’s time to sit for bilateral talks, most presidents—MOST presidents—feel it’s a good idea to review the goals of the United States and the other nation (Levels 1 & 2), and to understand the point of view the opposite number will take and how to exploit that (Levels 3–5). Notice I didn’t say “sympathize” or “agree with” their point-of-view. When you “understand” where your allies and enemies are coming from, you have a far better chance of manipulating them.

Trump openly shuns such preparation, going in on instinct alone. Bolton shows our President passively agreeing to everything Kim puts out there, like a novice poker player not folding, not raising, but calling every bet cuz he has an ace in his hand and aces are good, right? With the heads of Canada, France, Germany—our allies—Trump went in with Level 1 thinking and a brash, insulting bully style. He’d show THEM who was smart.

With Kim, he shows his cards.

He points to his advisors and says, “That guy hates you.” He admits, unprompted, to the BARE MINIMUM it’d take to win his favor. I’m surprised Kim didn’t sell Trump a bridge while they were at it.

Bolton sat in on this disastrous first meeting in Singapore in stunned silence. Should he have spoken up? Would a “domestic disagreement” among the Americans made things worse or better? I can’t say. But the Singaporean Foreign Minister did:

Balakrishnan said the US had already given away three things: first, having the meeting to begin with, a “give” that everyone except Trump saw; second, the difficulty in returning to our “maximum pressure” campaign, also obvious to everyone but Trump; and third, to China, because we were focusing on North Korea when China was the real strategic game. Balakrishnan was very convincing, and Trump couldn’t have been happy to hear any of it. [p. 99]

When Kim entered the room, his people leapt to their feet and remained rigid in salute; when he spoke, they hung on every word. Trump whined that no one did that for him. When Kim said the US should stop the joint military exercises with South Korean …

Trump answered exactly as I feared, reiterating to Kim his constant refrain that the exercises were provocative and a waste of time and money. He said he would override his generals, who could never make a deal, and decide that there would be no exercises as long as the two sides were negotiating in good faith. He said brightly that Kim had saved the United States a lot of money. Kim was smiling broadly, laughing from time to time, joined by [DPRK Gen.] Kim Yong Chol. You bet. We certainly were having fun. [p. 102]

The laughter was a tell that poker players DREAM about—an emotional outburst so honest, from men who knew their Dear Leader Kim has had underlings executed for the tiniest mistake, that Trump should’ve realized he was getting ripped off.

All Trump saw was an opportunity to cut the deficit. In Bolton’s account, the President doesn’t understand, or even seem capable of same, that the American military isn’t a mercenary outfit but is stationed in strategic places worldwide to protect the United States and its interests. This includes, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO, preventing wars and invasions against our political and economic allies. We aren’t in South Korea to protect South Korea like Rent-a-Cops, but to keep North Korea in line, lest it use its primitive nukes on South Korea, Japan … even the USA.

Trump asked me how we could be “sanctioning the economy of a country that’s seven thousand miles away.”

I answered, “Because they are building nuclear weapons and missiles that can kill Americans.”

“That’s a good point,” he agreed. We walked over to where [State Dept. Secretary Mike] Pompeo was standing, and Trump said, “I just asked John why we were sanctioning seven thousand miles away, and he had a very good answer: because they could blow up the world.”

“Yes, sir,” said Pompeo. Another day at the office. [p. 299]

Bolton shows how the President views everything through the lens of money:

[Trump] said, revealingly, “Other Presidents just didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about money. That’s all I know how to talk about.” [p. 267]

That’s true. He knows how to talk about money. Not how to properly earn or generate it, how to manage it without bankruptcies and shell-company/nonprofit shenanigans, how not to get into a position of taking new loans to cover interest payments on old loans. Seriously, he (his org) took out two loans of $50,000,000 last year. Why does a billionaire need to borrow cash? It’s insane that we’ve never been able to analyze his taxes. These loans could be politically dangerous, leading Trump to direct the country’s policy in a way that only benefits himself.

By cancelling the joint military exercises, Trump saw a quick and easy way to save money. An instant victory. When he tried strong-arming NATO allies, Japan, and South Korea to paying more of the upkeep on American bases there, he ran into sticky resistance from both foreign and domestic voices. When he shamed our partners by revealing they pay less than others, he inadvertently revealed (as with office gossip above) that he would discuss such details about everyone TO everyone, breaking trust.

The only exception to this “pay us more or we leave” tactic is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kind of. While Trump repeatedly urges his people to pull out the forces there, he seems to understand why it’s necessary to stay (and even shoulder all the financial cost):

“There are still a lot of people there,” but fortunately he went on to say, “Having no one is dangerous, because they [the terrorists] tend to form there and knock down buildings,” which was exactly the point. Trump repeated one of his hobbyhorses, namely that it was cheaper to rebuild the World Trade Center than to fight in Afghanistan, inconveniently ignoring the loss of life in the 9/11 attacks, not just the cost of rebuilding. It also ignored the reality that a Trump withdrawal [overseas], followed by a terrorist attack [in the US], would be devastating politically. [p. 385]

Troop withdrawal in Iraq and Afghanistan is the thorniest issue in present-day United States foreign policy. For once, Trump’s penchant of blaming someone else is true:

“We’ll never get out. This was done by a stupid person named George Bush,” he said, to me. “Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars, and we just can’t do it. Another six months, that’s what they said before, and we’re still getting our asses kicked.” [p. 197]

On failure and blame, Bolton provides clues into Trump’s psyche: he hates both, doesn’t acknowledge either, and scapegoats like crazy. After setting the policy direction and hiring a Defense Secretary to carry it out, Trump puts all the blame on him for failing where none other has succeeded:

Then Trump came back at Mattis: “I gave you what you asked for. Unlimited authority, no holds barred. You’re losing. You’re getting your ass kicked. You failed.” This painful repetition demonstrates that Trump, who endlessly stresses he is the only one who makes decisions, had trouble taking responsibility for them. [p. 200]

When an obvious failure of his own doing can’t be shifted to others, Trump has a procedure for that, too:

“Play it down,” said Trump, which was yet again the wrong approach, but which reflected his view that if you pretended bad things hadn’t happened, perhaps no one else would notice. [p. 345]

The book closes with some discussion on the Ukraine affair and the impeachment that followed. Bolton quit just as the former was happening, and makes plain the conceit that President cut a deal to have an ally investigate his rival. Bolton also unequivocally denounces the bullshit from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani:

The subject was Ukraine, and Giuliani’s desire to meet with President-Elect Zelensky to discuss his country’s investigation of either Hillary Clinton’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign or something having to do with Hunter Biden and the 2020 election, or maybe both. In the various commentaries I heard on these subjects, they always seemed intermingled and confused, one reason I did not pay them much heed. Even after they became public, I could barely separate the strands of the multiple conspiracy theories at work. [p. 414]

Bolton’s opinion on Rudy’s slant meant nothing once Trump bought it.

Trump completely accepted Giuliani’s line that the “Russia collusion” narrative, invented by domestic US political adversaries, had been run through Ukraine. In other words, Trump was buying the idea that Ukraine was actually responsible for carrying out Moscow’s efforts to hack US elections. That clearly meant we wouldn’t be doing anything nice for Ukraine any time soon. [p. 416]

Bolton contrasts this to a similar scenario that occurred while he worked for George H. W. Bush:

[…] the key remarks in the July 25 call that later raised so much attention, deservedly so, whether impeachable, criminal, or otherwise. When, in 1992, Bush 41 supporters suggested he ask foreign governments to help out in his failing campaign against Bill Clinton, Bush and [then-Secretary of State] Jim Baker completely rejected the idea.

Trump did the precise opposite. [p. 422]

When the Democrats in the House found out, they filed articles of impeachment.

The two fiercest arguments against THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED are:

1) the left says John Bolton should’ve presented all this information at the impeachment.

2) the right says Bolton’s a backbiting traitor for violating the trust of his President.

In principle, in a perfect world, I agree with both. Bolton could have volunteered to testify before the House. He also could have waited to publish a book detailing such intimate knowledge of the President’s goals and tactics until that President was out of office. If Trump has one legit claim to this book harming his ability to do his job, it’s that.

Bolton addresses each of these issues and finds logical, thinly legal reasons why they’re wrong. He is, after all, a lawyer. Making a case is what the guy does.

As for the former, Bolton blames the Democrats for making their case too narrow:

The impeachment proponents [should have built] not just an “adequate” evidentiary record, but a compelling one. Indeed, in some senses it was a mirror image of what impeachment advocates were accusing Trump of doing: torquing [sic] legitimate governmental powers around an illegitimate nongovernmental objective. The consequences of this partisan approach by the House were twofold. First, it narrowed the scope of the impeachment inquiry dramatically. [p. 436]

Bolton argues that a broad spectrum of charges would’ve made the case that Trump, as a whole, is in violation of his duty—while ignoring his ability to help make that happen by volunteering his testimony.

Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests (whether political or economic), but on the broader pattern of his behavior—including his pressure campaigns involving Halkbank, ZTE, and Huawei among others—there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that “high crimes and misdemeanors” had been perpetrated. In fact, I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations. [p. 437]

If Pelosi stood before Congress wanting to file a dozen or a hundred charges, the impeachment process would’ve become a farce, and every president thereafter with an opposing House will face such a clown show. And it’s rather farcical to assume the Republicans might have voted differently in that scenario.

As to why Bolton didn’t testify, it’s tied into his answer for the right’s complaint of trust violation. Bolton is a strict Constitutionalist, and claims the First Amendment right to publish his work while also grudgingly allowing that Article II gives the President the right to edit the manuscript to remove classified intel.

This same Article II, when viewed ultra-broadly (as conservatives often do), gave Trump the right to forbid his current and former staff from testifying before Congress, even when compelled by subpoena. Whether Bolton agreed with the impeachment charges, he says, is immaterial:

This is not to say that I have any doubts about a President’s Article II authority over the Department of Justice. But it does mean that a President’s Constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” means that the laws must be applied evenhandedly. A President may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guise of national interest. [p. 437]

The House put this to the test by issuing a few subpoenas. Bolton, while acknowledging it’s a tug of war between two legal tenants, said he would honor the Article II order and not the subpoena … so the House simply didn’t bother to issue one for him. This is a classic mistake of “accepting reality” rather than pushing the legal process to its limit and FORCING Bolton to say no in a binding fashion.

Still, THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED makes a compelling case that John Bolton is not the villain here; Trump is. Faced with the idea of this president securing a second term, Bolton writes:

As this memoir demonstrates, many of Trump’s national security decisions hinged more on political than on philosophy, strategy or foreign policy and defense rationales. More widely, faced with the coronavirus crisis, Trump said, “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” He threatened to adjourn Congress, wrongly citing a Constitutional provision that has never been used. No conservative who has read the Constitution could be anything but astonished at these assertions.

Of course, politics is ever present in government, but a second-term Trump will be far less constrained by politics than he was in his first term. The irony could well be that Democrats will find themselves far more pleased substantively with a “legacy”-seeking Trump in his second term than conservatives and Republicans. Something to think about. [p. 441]

Certainly more compelling than Frank Herbert’s ultra-beloved but dull as shite DUNE. Take the space opera and warrior-monk mysticism of STAR WARS and remove all the fun banter and space battles. Then take GAME OF THRONES royal-houses’ scheming and remove all the gore, the fucking, and the surprises. Insert a young white male hero who, by the end, is so powerful in galactic magic that he can even crush poison in his veins to death …

That’s DUNE.

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED also lacks fun banter, gore, fucking, and surprises. There are no heroes here either. But there is a poison seeping ever deeper in America’s bloodstream.