President Donald Trump told the Daily Caller about a series of conversations he had with former National Security Adviser John Bolton that made him realize Bolton was a “dumb maniac who wants to go to war with any anybody that can breathe.”
Trump, during an hour-long exclusive interview in the Oval Office, said that, despite knowing of Bolton’s hawkish foreign policy, he hired him “to hear both sides.”
President Donald Trump sits down for an Oval Office interview with Daily Caller’s Christian Datoc, Vince Coglianese, and Geoff Ingersoll (White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
“This guy’s a dumb maniac that wants to go to war with any anybody that can breathe,” he continued. “And I like to hear all sides, and I like to hear his side.” (EXCLUSIVE: Pressed To List Second Term Initiatives, Trump Says He Could Support Modernizing Antitrust Laws)
Still, the president said that two conversations Bolton had with him back in 2018 convinced him “Bolton was stupid.”
The first occurred shortly after Bolton’s May 2018 appearance on CBS’ “Face The Nation,” during which Bolton floated using the “Libyan model” on North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.
TRUMP: He made a serious statement. I said, ‘now what does that mean, the Libyan model?’ To me it means one thing. Gaddafi was taken over by a mob, dumped into a sewer, shot a hundred and twenty-eight times, and pissed on.
DAILY CALLER: After he was shot by a NATO aircraft.
TRUMP: Add that to it.
DAILY CALLER: What precipitated Gaddafi getting grabbed by the mob was NATO shooting him with a drone.
TRUMP: I didn’t know that. Well, add that to it. So, Bolton is on television, and I have a good relationship with Kim Jung Un, and I have a representative, right, saying this. Believe me, it was a very bad statement, that you know they put out a statement right after. I said, ‘maybe they didn’t see it.’ They did. About five minutes later, they put out a very strong statement and then right after that I was with him and said, ‘why did you make that statement?’ He said, ‘I wasn’t referring,’ and I said, ‘there’s only one thing you can refer to.’
The second centered around Bolton’s support for the Iraq War.
“I said, ‘so going into the Middle East was that a good thing or a bad thing?’” Trump recounted to the Caller. “He said, ‘I think it was a good thing,’ I said, ‘you cannot be serious about that.’ It’s the most tragic mistake our country ever made.”
Daily Caller will be publishing additional selections from the interview with the president in the coming days.