To kick off his second term, President Donald Trump sought revenge on President Joe Biden, elite law firms, elite universities, and even some of his former staffers — including John Bolton.
Bolton has worked in every Republican presidential administration since the ’80s, including Trump’s first, as national security adviser. Together, they tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the “Iran nuclear deal” put in place by President Barack Obama.
The Trump-Bolton partnership, however, was not meant to last. Bolton left the Trump administration acrimoniously and has been a constant critic of the president since, so it should be no surprise that Trump revoked his security detail within hours of taking office for a second term in January.
Retribution — a theme of Trump’s first 100 days — was one reason to speak with Bolton this week. The other was to get his take on how our democracy is faring at the moment. Another former Trump staffer named John, former chief of staff John Kelly, has said Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
But Bolton wouldn’t go that far, even after 100 days of payback. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
I don’t disagree with John Kelly on his assessment about Trump, what Trump does, and what’s wrong with [his behavior]. To be a fascist [however], you have to think at some conceptual level, which Trump never does.
Would quibble with the term “fascist” because it’s too simplistic?
It’s too far above Trump’s capabilities. He has no philosophy. He has, in the national security space, no grand strategy, and doesn’t do policy as we conventionally understand that term. It was difficult for me to accept. … There are plenty of people around him with problematic philosophies, people who do have the ability to think at a more conceptual level. What they say may ultimately be reflected in certain Trump decisions, but it’s not because he shares their worldview or anything like that.
What was your impression of his approach — if not something leaning towards fascism or authoritarianism — when you were in his administration?
I think he wants to be the center of attention. I think that’s probably his principal motivating factor.
I think his approach was once described by [conservative columnist] Charles Krauthammer very well. Krauthammer said that he began by thinking Trump was an 11-year-old. But he realized after a close evaluation that he was about 10 years off: Trump’s really a 1-year-old who just sees everything in the world and asks the question, “What’s in this for me?”
Somebody else, I don’t remember the name, observed that Trump doesn’t have ideas, he has reactions. And I think that’s also an important insight.
If you took all of his decisions in his first term, they’d be a big archipelago of dots; a lot of the dots I agreed with. But if you try to connect the dots…Trump himself couldn’t connect the dots.
What have you thought of the first 100 days of the second administration so far?
I think it’s even more incoherent. What you’re seeing in public now [is] what many of us who were in the first term saw in private.
Obviously, they spent the four years in exile at Mar-a-Lago planning. [In] their first 100 days, much more was accomplished from Trump’s point of view than in his first 100 days in the first term. I’m not sure that history will record that after this burst of activity in the first 100 days, there’s much more follow-up.
I think Trump will get bogged down in a lot of subsidiary issues that happen to catch his attention. For example, he’s now chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center. And I can think of nothing more important than for a man who knows so much about buildings [than] to spend a little time on the question of the rugs at the Kennedy Center, the carpeting, the curtains, and the stages.
I think you’re getting at something that I’m constantly struck by, which is while this seems like a serious administration with serious ideas, there’s also all of these distractions that make this seem like a bit of a clown car.
The DOGE firings and then hiring back of nuclear safety personnel, the infamous Houthi PC small group chat, the tariffs, no tariffs, tariffs, just kidding, no tariffs. At the same time, you’ve got the campaign of retribution we’ve spoken about. You’ve got defying court orders and challenging the judiciary. You’ve got the silencing of speech left and right; the First Amendment.
When you see these constitutional infringements, are you worried for the state of the republic?
I don’t think Trump is an existential threat. I think our institutions are a lot stronger than him. … I think we will survive.
But I think many of the things you’ve mentioned, he has singled out by executive order for example, Chris Krebs, former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Bureau at Department of Homeland Security in his first term, for prosecution because he dared to say that the 2020 election was safe and free from interference in cyberspace, which Trump didn’t want to believe. He singled out a fellow named Miles Taylor, who had been chief of staff to the secretary of Homeland Security. These are actions by a president with no predicate for a criminal investigation that I think are very threatening.
But you’ve got to evaluate all this [as] Trump making the first move. He’s done all this in the first 100 days. He’s done it in Trump time because he stays up until two in the morning. He’s constantly active. The judicial system obviously doesn’t normally react with such speed. Trump makes his headline and then moves on to something else.
The real question is: What is followed up?
I think if we come back in a couple of years, we’ll see a lot of the effort of the first 100 days just in ashes because the courts will have held. I think that is the ultimate check. It obviously will have cost people money for attorneys’ fees and time and aggravation and concern. But I think a lot of these efforts will fail, and they will set precedents that will make it even harder for a future president to try this kind of thing.
It was 95 years since the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were an act of monumental stupidity in 1930. I think history will record that Trump-Vance tariffs as another monumental act of stupidity, and hopefully it’ll be another 95-year-long lesson. From that perspective, a lot of what has happened in the first 100 days is incomplete because while Trump has moved his pawn to King 4, the rest of the system is still reacting.
You have worked under four presidential administrations, from Reagan to George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush to, of course, President Trump. Does that historical long view that you personally possess work to your advantage in these trying times of ours?
Well, we’ve suffered a lot worse in this country. We did have a civil war where over 600,000 soldiers died of one cause or another, and the country moved on. I’m not underestimating the problems that Trump is causing. I just think it’s important to bring as many people along on the proposition that this is unacceptable. I think sometimes, using the rhetoric that says this is existential turns people off. And I’m looking to convince as many people as possible that this is an aberration in American politics, that it’s not sustainable, and particularly in the Republican Party, that beginning in 2026, certainly in 2028, we’ve got to move on from it.
