Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton has confirmed that he will not vote for Donald Trump during the upcoming presidential election in early November.
“This will be the first time in my adult political career when I won't be voting for the Republican nominee for president”, Bolton said during an interview with the Washington-based National Press Club organisation on Tuesday.
He insisted that for the sake of the Republican Party “we have to get past the Trump era” and that under POTUS, “there are no rules except 'What benefits Donald Trump?'".
Bolton also claimed that Trump “sees things almost exclusively from the prism of what benefits him” and that Americans should not “trust him with another four years”.
The interview came after the former Trump administration official told ABC News in June that he would cast ballots neither in favour of Trump nor his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the 3 November election.
“I don’t think he should be president. I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job. I don’t think he’s a conservative Republican. I’m not going to vote for him in November. I’m certainly not going to vote for Joe Biden either. I’m going to figure out a conservative Republican to write in”, Bolton pointed out.
He voiced hope that history would remember Trump as “a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recall from”.
“We can get over one term. Two terms I’m more troubled about”, according to Bolton.
He made the remarks shortly before the publication of his book titled "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir", in which Bolton specifically portrayed Trump as a president who was allegedly manipulated and easily influenced by the leaders of China, Russia, Turkey, and North Korea.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quick to blame former National Security Adviser Bolton for "spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods", while Trump lambasted Bolton’s book as "a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad".
