Trump Arch-Enemy John Bolton Speculates Whether Former President Will Run Again in 2024
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci
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Donald Trump hired John Bolton as his national security advisor in April 2018, with Bolton counseling the president to pursue a more aggressive policy toward Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Iran, and other US adversaries, and to ramp up support for Israel. Trump fired Bolton in September 2019, citing numerous “disagreements” with the hawkish official.
John Bolton predicts that his former boss Donald Trump won’t actually run for the presidency in 2024, notwithstanding his recent bluster on the matter.
“I’ll give you a prediction that will be worth the money you paid for it. I don’t think he’s gonna run in 2024. I think he’s deeply afraid of losing again, he doesn’t wanna be remembered as a loser in history. I think he’ll talk about running incessantly but I think when push comes to shove he won’t run, he’ll try and be a kingmaker,” Bolton told Sky News on Monday.
Bolton, who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations for decades in various capacities before getting hired by Trump in 2018, and fired a year and a half later, suggested that the GOP field for 2024 was “wide open,” and predicted that there would be a “very vigorous competition” for the nomination. He did not elaborate on who the frontrunner might be.
“I think Trump is fading inevitably. You know, when you leave the White House, the most powerful office in the world, and go sit by the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago [Trump’s Palm Beach mansion] nobody should be surprised when your influence diminishes. People vote, at least in the United States, they vote looking forward. They say ‘what are the politicians gonna do to address the issues right in front of me now?’ They don’t wanna relitigate the 2020 election, that’s all Donald Trump wants to do. I think his audience is diminishing day by day by day,” Bolton suggested.
The Epic Trump-Bolton Dispute
Donald Trump and John Bolton had a public falling out of epic proportions after the president fired him from his job as his national security advisor in September 2019. Some Trump supporters criticized the president for hiring the neocon in the first place, despite his repeated attacks on the neoconservative, military interventionist wing of the Republican Party throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
Bolton released a salaciously-titled memoir called ‘The Room Where It Happened’ less than a year after getting fired, accusing the president of a broad range of foolish and potentially incriminating behaviour.
Trump dismissed the claims made in the book, calling Bolton a “traitor,” and going on to attack him as a “dolt,” a “boring fool” and “one of the dumbest people in Washington.” In one interview, Trump suggested that if he had ever taken Bolton’s advice on major issues, the United States “would be in World War Six by now.” While Bolton was still serving as his national security advisor, Trump also quipped that the hawkish official “never seen a war he doesn’t like.”
Since leaving office, Bolton has gone on to offer free policy advice to the Biden administration, urging the president to take out “two-faced Pakistan’s” nuclear weapons capabilities over Islamabad’s suspected support for the Taliban,* and warning that the Taliban themselves could get nukes someday.
* An organization under United Nations sanctions over suspected terrorist activities.
