White House Brawl: Mike Pompeo Calls John Bolton a Traitor and a Liar
Mike Pompeo used the Department of State's website to officially call out President Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton as a liar and a traitor.
In a brief press statement titled "I was in the room, too," Pompeo stated emphatically,
I’ve not read [Bolton's] book, but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods.
For a senior diplomat, Pompeo became quite undiplomatic, going to the extreme of calling Bolton a "traitor" to the nation.
It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton’s final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people. To our friends around the world: you know that President Trump’s America is a force for good in the world.
Pompeo was referring, of course, to John Bolton’s new book, "The Room Where it Happened."
Pompeo's comment merely added a backup chorus to Trump's own claims that Bolton is a liar as well as "a dope."
Pompeo Backing Trump's Claims that Bolton is a Liar
Bolton's new book has raised a tirade of Trumpian tweets because of its numerous claims of Trump's ineptitude and self-service.
President Trump tries to take down his own cabinet appointee, John Bolton, as a liar. | Source: Twitter
It's almost fun to watch these guys take each other down.
https://youtu.be/I8C5e9BQOpE
It appears to me as if Bolton has taken a page from his former master and has learned how to play the press for publicity as provocateur because he certainly is getting a lot of it.
The old rubric used to be "all press is good press." The idea was that it doesn't matter if press about you is bad. All that matters is that your name is staying in the press, so everyone is talking about you.
Trump has lived by that all of his life, saying outrageous things because he knows the media cannot resist the headlines and the controversy. It sells.
Now he's falling right into it as a trap by responding constantly to Bolton's provocation, which only gives Bolton great publicity for his new book.
Is John Bolton the Liar Pompeo and Trump Claim, or is Trump Inept?
Keeping up with his reputation from "The Apprentice," Donald Trump has probably fired his way through more of his own appointees than any president in history.
While I haven't counted them all, John Bolton walked out the White House doors as part of a long line of "no-talent" bums according to Trump.
Every time the Boot-in-Chief kicks someone out, he claims his own team players are stupid, no-talent, bad actors. Doesn't that make Trump the stupidest, least-talented, bad actor of them all?
Who else is to blame for this endless parade of clowns that Trump constantly ridicules?
https://youtu.be/kaM-prl6IYQ
Trump never gets what Truman understood, or he doesn't have the guts to own responsibility.
Truman recognized, when you make decisions based on what your team advises, the fault of any decision rests on you. If the team advises you poorly, you still made the decision, and you chose the bad team.
What would we think of an NFL manager or a team owner who picked a team of the worst football players in history? Would we excuse them if they constantly told us what a bunch of no-talent players their team was?
No. We'd ridicule them as the obvious village idiots of the NFL. If you can't put together a winning team at the start of the season, nothing you do after that is going to be worth watching.
Applying Truman's maxim that "the buck stops here," I have to conclude that President Trump is every bit as inept as John Bolton claims he is.
As if it somehow makes himself look like a great leader, Trump even stated on "Hannity" that he believed Bolton was a "washed up guy" when he hired him.
https://youtu.be/6jejoixSg2s
By Trump's own words, then, he knew what he was picking.
Donald Trump Drained the Swamp into the White House Basement
Trump promised to drain the swamp, then he filled the top positions in the White House with Goldman Sachs moneymeisters, media wallstreeters like Larry Kudlow, and uber-hawk military/intelligence deepstaters like John Bolton.
(I think, over time, I've given a balanced report card on how Trump has drained the swamp and how he has empowered the swamp. You can get a broad overview by reading the following articles (ordered from latest to first): "Team Trump Transmogrifies into the Swamp Thing" and "You Got Trumped" and "Team Trump (Pt 3): Trunk Loads of Establishment Baggage" and "Team Trump (Pt. 2): Top of the Crop is a Mixed Bag" and "Trump: Trojan, Traitor, or Tried and True?.")
How can he complain that all Bolton ever wanted was to start a war when we all knew before Trump appointed him that all Bolton ever wanted was to start a war?
It seems like every week Trump has to fire a new swamp creature that he appointed! His backers excuse him with the claim that he is playing 4-D chess. He isn't even playing 3-D marbles.