Bolton Memoir: Conflicts In The White House And Trump's 'Stunning' Ignorance On Geopolitics

Excerpts of John Bolton’s new memoir reveal multiple previously unreported claims of tensions between key administration officials and claims that President Donald Trump was “stunningly uninformed” of world politics.

Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, will release the tell-all book “The Room Where It Happened” about his 17 months in office on June 26.

Bolton alleges in the book that Trump was unaware of facts about allies and rivals of the United States and asked questions that suggested Mike Pence could be replaced as vice president in the 2020 elections.

Bolton wrote that Trump had asked him what he thought about “dump[ing] Pence from the ticket in 2020 and run instead with Nikki Haley,” who was the then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton claims he persuaded the president that “it was a bad idea to jettison someone loyal.”

Bolton also claimed that Trump lied when he said then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Haley, “You’re nothing but a [expletive], and don’t ever forget it.”

The former adviser also claims that then-Chief of Staff John Kelly told him that the 2018 decision to revoke the clearance of former CIA director John Brennan was “Nixonian” behavior.

“I thought there was a case against Brennan for politicizing the CIA, but Trump had obscured it by the blatantly political approach he took,” Bolton wrote.

Kelly also allegedly said, “Trump doesn’t care about what happens to these guys,” when the president alluded to his son, who had died in Afghanistan in 2010.

“Since Trump was disparaging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time, he had seemingly implied that Kelly's son had died needlessly,” Bolton says. “He says it would be 'cool' to invade Venezuela.”

“In most Administrations, that would have gotten Tillerson fired, so I wondered if he ever actually said it,” Bolton wrote.

One excerpt from Bolton’s memoir suggested that Trump was not aware that the United Kingdom, an American ally, was a nuclear nation.

Bolton wrote that he could tell Trump was not joking when he asked a UK official, “Oh, are you a nuclear power?” The UK has had nuclear-armed submarines since the 1980s.

He also wrote that Trump allegedly asked if Finland, a Nordic country, was part of Russia. Finland fought a border dispute with the Soviet Union in 1939 and was later invaded. It is now a fully independent state.

Trump also allegedly questioned the need to sanction North Korea during a summit with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam because it was so far away.

Bolton wrote that he said it was because the Hermit kingdom was’ building nuclear weapons and missiles that can kill Americans.”

Trump has called Bolton “a washed-up guy” in response to allegations in the book.

“He couldn't get Senate-confirmed. So I gave him a non-Senate-confirmed position. I could just put him there, see how we worked. And I wasn't very enamored,” Trump told Fox’s Hannity.

Trump also said Bolton “broke the law” by writing about his time as national security adviser.

“I mean, as much as it's going to be broke,” Trump said. “It's highly classified information and he did not have approval.”