Donald Trump is not afraid to intervene in the UK election this year, potentially injecting further chaos into British politics, his former national security adviser John Bolton has warned.
Mr Trump would also cause major strategic problems for the UK government over Nato and Ukraine if he becomes president again, Mr Bolton predicted in an interview with i.
Mr Trump would also cause major strategic problems for the UK government over Nato and Ukraine if he becomes president again, Mr Bolton predicted in an interview with i.
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00:00 I think it's entirely possible he would say something and wouldn't care about the conventions
00:04 of not interfering. But, you know, I have to say we've just seen the example here of Senator Schumer
00:09 telling the Israelis they needed to have a new election to get rid of Bibi Netanyahu,
00:13 which President Biden then supported. So people interfere in US elections all the time by talking
00:20 about our politicians. We do the same. I don't think it's a good idea either way, but you have
00:25 to acknowledge I think it's fairly common. There are things that are simply not what I think normal
00:33 people do. And, you know, once on the way to Brussels for this 2018 summit, he then went on
00:41 to see Theresa May in London and then went on to the Helsinki summit with Putin. So he walked out
00:48 of the White House and on his way to the helicopter to Marine One, and he stopped, as he often did
00:54 with the press, talked about the trip. And he said, you know, I think the meeting with Vladimir
00:58 Putin might be the easiest meeting of all. He said, who would have thought of that? And the
01:02 answer is nobody except Donald Trump. I mean, just to go from the sublime to the ridiculous,
01:10 at one point we were supporting Juan Guaido as a legitimate president of Venezuela against Maduro
01:17 and the military junta that essentially surrounded him. You know, Maduro had threatened Guaido's
01:25 families and he had imprisoned his chief of staff. And so we arranged a visit for Guaido's wife and
01:34 the wife of the chief of staff who was being held in a particularly brutal Venezuelan prison. They
01:39 came into the Oval Office, we had the press in. Trump was very gracious with him. He listened,
01:44 they told the stories of how Mrs. Guaido's children had been intimidated by Maduro's thugs,
01:51 how the wife of the chief of staff had seen her husband dragged out of their home, put in prison.
01:56 Really, I think quite helpful to get across to the American people why we were with Guaido against
02:03 Maduro. And so the meeting ended, the press left, they were escorted out. I went out with them. I
02:10 went back into the Oval to see Trump. And I said, I think I wanted to say I thought that had been a
02:18 really very effective, very helpful thing in support of Guaido. But before I could get that,
02:24 he said to me, "Did you notice she didn't have a wedding ring on?" And I thought to myself,
02:29 "What?" You know, this is Trump in action. And I could go on at length. Well, I had met him before
02:39 the 2016 campaign. I'd met with him during the campaign, right before the foreign policy debate
02:44 with Hillary Clinton. I met with him several times after he became president, before I joined the
02:48 administration. I think I heard everything about him that anybody else in America could have heard.
02:56 I don't think I have any illusions. Very few people have ever called me naive. So I think,
03:01 at least I thought at the time, I knew what I was getting into. Because I also believe that like
03:08 every one of his 44 predecessors, Trump would be disciplined by the gravity of the responsibilities
03:16 that he had, at least in the national security space. And the implications, seriousness of the
03:22 consequences of his decision would provide a form of discipline. And you could have,
03:28 even with somebody like Trump, an orderly discussion of options and make decisions that way.
03:35 And it just turned out that I was wrong, that the weight of the responsibilities did not discipline
03:41 him. And that was true during the entire 17 months I was a national security advisor.
03:48 I was following George Conway, you may have seen him on TV, was Kellyanne Conway's husband,
03:54 very negative on Trump over the years. And so he told the story, he and Kellyanne,
03:59 then his wife, Steve Bannon, and Trump in a motorcade out to Long Island,
04:03 before the, after the election in 2016, but before the inauguration,
04:08 they said they're driving along and somehow my name came up. He said Trump went on for 15 minutes
04:13 about the mustache. I can laugh at it now, it doesn't make any difference. But this is the
04:21 man who was the leader of the free world for four years and could be again. Well, I think the main
04:28 concern should be what he would do in Ukraine, what he would do with respect to NATO. And
04:34 I think it's pretty clear to me, at least that the withdrawal from NATO is a very likely in a
04:42 second Trump term. And I think he said with respect to Ukraine, basically, he could solve
04:47 it in 24 hours, which is ridiculous. He'd get Zelensky and Putin into a room and resolve it,
04:52 which is probably also pretty silly. But if it failed, of course, it wouldn't be Trump's fault,
04:57 it would be somebody else's fault, by definition. And my fear is it would be Zelensky by default,
05:03 because certainly his good friend, Vladimir Putin wouldn't be at fault. So there are a lot
05:08 of ramifications, a lot of other issues on which Trump's performance, I think, would be troubling.
05:14 But in the immediate future, with respect to the UK, I think those are the most salient.
05:19 What Trump believes is he can make a deal out of anything. He can make a deal with Ukraine and
05:25 Russia, he can make a deal in the Middle East. He thinks he can make a deal with Kim Jong-un,
05:29 with Xi Jinping on trade. I mean, everything is a deal for him. What the terms are,
05:36 almost irrelevant, because he wants the credit for having made the deal. And I will say in
05:42 diplomatic circles, you know, when somebody says, "We have reached agreement on an international
05:48 issue," people say, "Oh, it's wonderful." And then they say, "By the way, what are the terms of the
05:51 deal?" So Trump is really like diplomats in certain respect, is the deal is more important
05:57 than the substance to him. That's a big mistake.
05:59 [END]