3.4.22
Former national security adviser John Bolton told The Washington Post Friday that he thinks former president Donald Trump would have pulled the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had he been reelected in 2020. Bolton, in an interview with Post opinions editor at large Michael Duffy, said the former president came close to pulling the United States out of NATO in 2018, a claim he originally made in a memoir published in 2020. In his book, Bolton wrote that he had to convince Trump not to quit NATO in the middle of a 2018 summit. On Friday, Bolton, who served as a top Trump adviser from 2018 to 2019, offered more details on their conversations that day, saying he “had my heart in my throat at that NATO meeting.” “I didn’t know what the president would do,” Bolton said. “He called me up to his seat seconds before he gave the speech. And I said, look, go right up to the line, but don’t go over it. I sat back down. I had no idea what he’d do.”
“In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO,” Bolton said. “And I think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was waiting for that.” Bolton’s remarks Friday offer new insights into Trump’s views on NATO. During his presidency, Trump frequently sought to undermine the alliance. Trump has recently tried to revise his history with NATO, saying Monday that there “would be no NATO” if it hadn’t been for him. Bolton, who has become a vocal critic of his former boss, recently drew Trump’s ire after telling conservative network Newsmax that the former president “barely knew where Ukraine was.”Bolton, in that interview, also denied that Trump was tough on Russia, and claimed that the former president complained about any sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the United States. Bolton has also said Trump “did not” do a better job with Russia than President Biden has.