John Bolton could yet test Trump’s remarkable ability to face down problems

If the former national security advisor sticks to his principles he could yet cause trouble for the president, writes Kim Sengupta

Trump has vilified Bolton, right, since he spoke out over the Ukraine scandal (Getty)

We have in the past condemned John Bolton as a dangerous superhawk, a warmonger and right-wing extremist. We now realise that he is, in fact a staunch defender of democracy, the constitution and liberal values.”

The parody of public volte-faces Private Eye magazine is fond of using is now perhaps apt to describe the reaction of Democrats and other adversaries of Donald Trump after the former national security advisor emerged with his highly damaging revelations about the president’s attempts to push the Ukrainian government into investigating Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

Republican senators blocked Bolton from giving evidence in the impeachment proceedings. But he can still harm Trump with what he chooses to make public in his impending book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir and the rounds of media interviews which will follow.

It is true, of course, that there have already been plenty of shocking disclosures about Trump, including from former senior members of his administration. Indeed, he has fallen out with more of those who have departed from his White House team than any other president in living memory, regularly lashing out at their alleged disloyalty.

But what makes Bolton different is that he is much more from the right-wing heartland, an advocate of the America First policy and the aggressive pursuit of US interests. He is more in tune with the president’s constituency.

Some in the right have rallied around Bolton. Among the praise for his Ukraine stance was this: “Administrations are tempted to do bad things and have people who have bad instincts or wrong instincts, and then there are people who just have judgment. And I would say that John Bolton comes out of this with a white hat of judgment. He is very attuned to his own principles, and he doesn’t get mixed up in dirty stuff.”

This appraisal of Bolton as the white-hatted lawman rather than a black-hatted outlaw in Trumptown came from Daniella Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

From the other side of the political spectrum, commentator and academic, Peter Beinart, has also been fulsome in his praise of Bolton in an article in The Atlantic headlined “The moral courage of John Bolton“.

In it, he lauds the man liberals have disparaged as an ultra-nationalist menace for being “incapable of whitewashing America’s betrayal of Ukraine, an ally under Russian threat”. He continues: “Dov Zakheim, a former undersecretary of defense who has known Bolton for decades, told me that Bolton would ‘take on the world if necessary, as long as he believes in what he believes in’. Luckily for the republic, taking on the world includes taking on Donald Trump.’’

As to be expected, Trump has vilified Bolton and a number of senior Republicans previously friendly to the former national security advisor have turned on him to prove their allegiance to the president.

There have been attacks on Bolton from Fox News, where he was a regular guest – with a fellow contributor, Dan Bongino, declaring that there was strong evidence that Bolton was part of a liberal conspiracy to bring down the president. Sean Hannity, the talk show host and Trump confidante, has said that he was little better than a traitor.

Not all at Fox have deserted Bolton, however. Andrew Napolitano, the station’s legal analyst, stated: “We know John. He used to work here. He’s a very intelligent, strong-willed, meticulously honest person. He was a conservative icon until two days ago. Now, the things they’re saying about him – it sounds like they’re talking about Nancy Pelosi. But he has come out with something that goes to the core of the case.”

Bolton has been ready to attack Trump and warn about him, albeit privately, after leaving his job in the administration. He recently suggested in a speech at a private hedge-fund event that the president could go “full isolationist” and withdraw the US from Nato and other international alliances.

In the same speech to Morgan Stanley executives, NBC reported, Bolton is said to have claimed that Trump’s approach to Turkey and its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been motivated by personal or business interests in the country.

Bolton has remained out of the public eye since the row broke over him giving evidence at the impeachment. But in another speech at another private event, that of an investment firm in Austin, Texas, he decried attacks by Trump and his supporters on the diplomats who had given evidence to the House of Representatives. “All of them acted in the best interest of the country as they saw it and consistent to what they thought our policies were. The idea that somehow testifying to what you think is true is destructive to the system of government we have – I think, is very nearly the reverse – the exact reverse of the truth,” he said.

I met Bolton once at a conference, in Kiev coincidentally, a year before he became involved with the White House. The Russiagate investigation was at full steam with the expectation (among his detractors) that Trump will be implicated. But Bolton was of the opinion that while some in the Trump coterie would end up in prison, Trump himself would emerge unscathed.

That certainly proved to be the case thanks to the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. But the Ukraine affair is another vulnerable issue for Trump. House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff has refused to be drawn on whether he would subpoena Bolton to appear at the chamber. But, the president’s remarkable ability to see off his adversaries may well be tested if John Bolton does indeed, as Peter Beinert and his liberal colleagues hope, sticks to what he firmly believes in and takes on Trump.