President Donald Trump blasted John Bolton on Thursday as a “sick puppy” who ruined his relationship with Kim Jong Un, as administration officials remained on edge over the former national security adviser’s blistering new book about his time in the White House.
Trump launched the broadside against Bolton in an early-morning tweetstorm as Bolton’s soon-to-be-released book, “The Room Where It Happened,” continued to dominate the headlines.
“Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad,” Trump posted. “Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!”
It’s unclear what reviews Trump was referring to.
Moreover, Trump’s own Justice Department is in court trying to block Bolton’s book from being published over allegations that it’s jam-packed with classified information, belying the president assertion that it only consists of “lies.”
But Trump was just getting started.
In a couple more tweets, Trump dredged up one of his long-held Bolton grievances involving North Korea and lamented that he didn’t fire the top security adviser sooner.
“When Wacko John Bolton went on Deface the Nation and so stupidly said that he looked at the ‘Libyan Model’ for North Korea, all hell broke out. Kim Jong Un, who we were getting along with very well, went ‘ballistic,’ just like his missiles — and rightfully so. He didn’t want Bolton anywhere near him,” Trump wrote.
The president continued: “Bolton’s dumbest of all statements set us back very badly with North Korea, even now. I asked him, ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ He had no answer and just apologized. That was early on, I should have fired him right then & there!”
A spokeswoman for Bolton did not return a request for comment.
Bolton’s book is set to officially hit shelves on June 23, but several news outlets got early copies, resulting in a torrent of damning stories on Wednesday.
Among other explosive claims, Bolton alleges in the book that Trump pleaded with China to interfere in the 2020 election to help him win.
The book also charges that Trump routinely tried to give “personal favors to dictators he liked” by derailing Justice Department investigations into companies in their countries. Among those dictators were China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Bolton.
Bolton, who resigned in September 2019, writes that House Democrats should have expanded their impeachment scope beyond Trump’s Ukraine scandal to include his dubious schemes with China and Turkey as well, contending that Senate Republicans may not have acquitted the president if they did so.
The former national security adviser could have shared this view under oath. However, he refused to testify in the House impeachment inquiry despite a subpoena, prompting speculation that he’s just interested in book sales.
———
©2020 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.