Donald Trump has said hawkish former White House advisor John Bolton was "pretty good" at scaring foreign leaders into making deals.
"Actually, Bolton was good, because every time I negotiated, people said: 'Oh, they've got this maniac here. He's going to go to war with us'," Trump said. "He was actually pretty good in a certain way."
There has been no love lost between Trump and Bolton, who served as his national advisor for a year-and-a-half from April 2018 to September 2019, and since they've parted ways.
Bolton has accused Trump of having a "constant fixation" with classified documents, which the 45th president now faces trial for allegedly taking from the Oval Office.
In his White House memoir, published in the midst of the 2020 election campaign, Bolton claimed Trump was “unfit for the job."
Trump in turn called Bolton a person who “has never seen a war he didn’t like,” adding that if he had followed the ex-security advisor's suggestions, then “we’d be in World War Six.”
Bolton has since continued to attack Trump, supporting failed Democrat plans to impeach the ex-president over claims he incited the January 6 protest occupying the US Capitol building in 2021.
The former White House advisor has also vehemently opposed his former chief's bid for a second term, claiming earlier this year Trump would withdraw the US from the NATO military bloc it dominates and urging him to step aside in favor of a mainstream neo-Conservative candidate.
He has even mulled joining the ever-growing pack of Republican primary hopefuls, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's vice-president Mike Pence and former United Nations envoy Nikki Hayley, all of whom are trailing far behind Trump in polls of Republican supporters.