Media Mention

Conway: John Bolton’s tragic mistake

June 14, 2020

Note: this piece was originally published in The Washington Post, and was written by Checks & Balances member George Conway. 

John Bolton made a mistake. It’s not the one you may think it is.

The former national security adviser’s memoir about his experiences working for President Trump will arrive on June 23. For months, the book has triggered criticism that Bolton put commercial profit over country by saving his depiction of Trump for the book, instead of providing it under oath during Trump’s impeachment proceedings last winter. A new wave of such criticism hit Bolton on Friday, when his publisher revealed more about what’s in the book.

In short: Trump is as bad as we thought, perhaps worse. According to the publisher, Bolton will describe Trump as “a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.” Bolton even “argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy.”

The response to this announcement was predictable — that, as Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) put it, Bolton “chose to sell books” when “the country needed him most.” Others echoed that criticism, and the Twitter hashtag #boycottbolton began trending.

If Bolton was trying to preserve and enhance the commercial value of his manuscript by avoiding testifying, he likely blundered: More people may well be dissuaded from buying the book than will rush to snap it up.

But Bolton’s supposed cash-over-country motive actually makes little sense at all.

Continue reading at The Washington Post.