RUSH: The Bolton book, and we have the Supreme Court decision this morning on DACA. Now, both of these things are easily explainable. But just because I can easily explain them, it’s not gonna mollify you. The Bolton book is not gonna have one iota’s impact on President Trump and his reelection campaign. John Bolton doesn’t have any credibility.
Even the Democrats are out ripping him to shreds because he didn’t have the guts to come talk about what he put in this book before their impeachment committees, and he didn’t do that because he didn’t want to undergo questioning. He didn’t want to have to answer questions about this stuff. But the main reason he didn’t want to do it is, nobody was gonna pay him. He’s making money off of this book. What is it, 29 bucks a copy, hardcover? He withheld all of this stuff. They were begging him to go testify two different times. He refused to do it.
Now — now, in the book — he comes out and chastises the Democrats for having a too-limited investigation, looking only at Ukraine? They should have looked at the some of the stuff that he was alleging? He wouldn’t come talk to them about it! This is obvious, what this is. This is holding back information, much of it not true — a lot of it made up — simply to sell books, simply to make some money and to avoid being questioned about it.
John Bolton knows that the book (as is happening now) is being feted and celebrated by the Trump-hating media. That’s gonna further sales, and that’s all he cares about. George W. Bush was betrayed by Bolton. A number of presidents have been betrayed by him. The real question… You know, I continue to ask this. I’ve been really curious at some of the Trump staffing decisions since day one, and I remember when Bolton was hired.
You know, the national security apparatus in the White House had undergone a lot of personnel change and people flipping in and out of there, and Bolton was looked at as a steadying influencing, that he was a patriot, that he was pro-America. He was gonna come in there and he was gonna calm everything down an dhe was gonna steer Trump in the right direction.
That’s not what he went in there to do. He went in there to try to stop Trump from being Trump, and he failed. So here comes his nose-out-of-joint book. Mattis! Why did Mattis take the gig — the defense secretary, James Mattis? I think all of these military people and all these foreign policy establishment people… I think they all took the jobs in the Trump administration. They’re all deep state.
They all wanted their chance at changing Trump’s mind. Trump was going to drain the swamp. Trump was going to end their careers. They wanted in there to try to change Trump’s mind, to influence him. Believe me: To a man, these people think Trump is a dunce. They think they are brilliant, experienced, far more sophisticated in — certainly — the ways of Washington.
So they think that they’re gonna get hired, and that’s gonna give them entree and that they’re gonna be able to, quote-unquote, “talk sense” into Trump. And, short of that, they’re gonna be able to sabotage Trump. One way or the other, they are gonna make sure that Trump stops being Trump. Remember what the Russian meddling/collusion was really all about, aside from separating Trump voters from Trump.
It was really all about covering up the effort that was the coup to get rid of Trump, to overturn the election results of 2016. Well, these guys were just part of it. H. R. McMaster, he had his turn at it. He was national security guy. Then you had Bolton in there. You had James Mattis. Lately, Mark Milley has come out, “chairman of chief joints,” and said, “Ah, would have never gone over to that church if I’da known what Trump would do.”
All of this is so patently obvious. It’s an effort to undermine, sabotage, or otherwise somehow change Trump’s thinking, Trump’s policies. Because every one of these people need their turf protected, lest Trump pull the rug out from under them by actually draining the swamp. So the fact that Bolton quits with his nose out of joint and writes this book, puts a bunch of things in it that aren’t true (that have already been denied), saving all this “bombshell information” for media adulation and $29.95 per copy.
That’s right. Even Pencil Neck and some of his committee members are ticked off that Bolton wouldn’t come talk to them and is now chastising them for having too limited a scope in their impeachment investigation. Now, one of the claims — and I knew this was BS when I read it before I even heard the denial. Bolton claims that Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping, the Communist Party dictator in China, to help him with his reelection.
Really? You really think we’re gonna buy that, Mr. Bolton? That in a meeting where you’re there and a bunch of other people there, Trump is actually going to appeal to the leader of China to help him in his reelection effort? Robert Lighthizer, who is the trade representative and is lead negotiator on all the China trade deals, has come out and said he was “in the room.”
He’s getting a little — oh, gee — a little snarky there because that’s the title of Bolton’s book. He said he was in the room and that it never happened. Grab audio sound bite number 8. Late yesterday afternoon on Capitol Hill at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Trump’s 2020 trade policy, Bob Menendez says to Lighthizer:
“About an hour ago the Washington Post published the story that says former President Trump, quote, ‘turned the conversation into the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns and pleading with Xi Jinping to ensure that he would win.'”
LIGHTHIZER: Absolutely untrue! Never happened. I was there. I’ve no recollection of that ever happening. I don’t believe it’s true. I don’t believe it ever happened.
RUSH: Right. Now, I know Lighthizer, and I know Lighthizer’s daughter, and he’s an honest sort. I’d much, much believe Lighthizer over Bolton. And there’s no way Lighthizer… If there’s proof of this and Lighthizer knows it, there was no way he would stick his neck out like this. The other example — and there are many — is Bolton says that the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, passed him a note that said:
“This guy,” meaning Trump, “is full of [crap],” except the word wasn’t “crap.” So Pompeo said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t pass notes. I don’t write notes and pass them around like high school kids do. Let him produce that note.” So there’s a challenge to Bolton to produce the note. The other thing that happened was that Bolton literally claimed that President Trump encouraged the ChiCom leader, Xi Jinping, to build concentration camps and to put Muslim Uyghurs (who the ChiComs hate) in the concentration camps.
It’s absurd!
These people are flailing away, and they’ve tried so many things to discredit Trump that all they have left are these fringe, extremist things that they might in their minds think Trump is capable of because they don’t know him and because they’ve bought into all of these manufactured images of the guy. But they’re making themselves look like idiots. In fact, Trump signed a bill condemning these concentration camps shortly after the Bolton book came out.
Now, that bill was in the works for a long time. The time of this was not timed to Bolton’s book. It was on its own time frame. “President Trump signed a bill condemning China’s concentration camps for the Uyghur Muslim community just hours after excerpts from … John Bolton surfaced which claim Trump encouraged [the ChiComs] to build the camps.
It didn’t happen. If he had encouraged the ChiComs to build the camps, why would he sign a bill condemning them? But he didn’t. It’s just… I think Bolton is part of this crowd that thinks everybody looks at Trump the way they all do — as a child, as unstable, as mentally impaired — and that they can make anybody believe anything they want about him, and it just continues.
They make no effort to understand who Trump’s supporters and voters are, and they make no effort to understand who Trump is. They keep trying the same old things. But the proof of the pudding here, folks, is this book comes out in, what, June? The book comes out in June. It’s not gonna have an impact on the election. None of it’s gonna end up being verified. People are gonna forget about it, not gonna believe much of it in the first place anyway.