Steal John Bolton's Book

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News

25 June 20

y ex-wife once told me that I never saw a bridge I didn’t want to burn. That wasn’t entirely true. But I do like to call things as I see them. Now it’s John Bolton’s turn to burn every bridge he’s built or otherwise encountered in more than 30 years in Washington. His new book, The Room Where It Happened, is in bookstores now, and it’s clear from a quick read that Bolton likes literally nobody. He apparently has never liked anybody. And he’s perfectly happy to give you his side of the story.

First, don’t buy this book. Don’t do John Bolton the favor. Get it from the library if you feel truly compelled to read it. I can’t legally tell you to read one of the many bootleg copies on the internet, but they’re there as well. Second, I want to say on the record that I have always loathed John Bolton. When I was at the CIA, he was a constant thorn in our side. I never met any policymaker who so loved war that he was willing to jump into it with both feet as much as John Bolton. His hatred of foreign governments that did not line up with our own – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba immediately come to mind – was irrational. He wanted to fight even when there was no intelligence to show that the policy was a wise one. And don’t forget that he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. 

Political memoirs are a very important genre in Washington, DC. They have become wildly popular in the past couple of decades, as senior officials cash in at the end of their government service, get their side of modern history on the record, and then live happily ever after on their massive book advances. Everybody does it – Democrats and Republicans alike. But those memoirs are usually vehicles for showing the writer as a statesman, as a historical figure living among us. Think of Robert Gates, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, et al. Love them or hate them, Washington insiders will read, reread, and refer to these tomes for years to come. Not so with Bolton’s.

Bolton’s book is a political hit job on everybody who crossed him during his tenure in the Trump White House, but mostly on Trump. It’s a mean-spirited poison pen that will likely preclude Bolton from working in any future White House. Bolton’s stories are meant to demean those with whom he worked as not up to his intellectual level. Their policies were stupid or misguided. They lacked the kind of experience Bolton had in the upper echelons of government. Most of his ire, though is aimed at Trump. And these stories say more about John Bolton than about the targets of his complaints.

• Bolton describes Trump as “crass, lacking in intelligence, subject to huge mood swings, and usually very impressed with the last person who spoke with him, whoever that was.” He goes on, “I don’t think [Trump] is fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job."


• Bolton writes that Trump practically prostrated himself before Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2019, asking the Premier to help him get reelected in 2020: “Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win,” Trump allegedly said.


• Bolton tells a bizarre story where Trump recounts to him a tiff between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In Trump’s telling of the story, Tillerson referred to Haley as a “c**t.” Bolton says that Tillerson had a lot of faults, but vulgarity wasn’t one of them. He challenged Trump on the language, but Trump stuck to his guns. Bolton concludes that the incident said much more about Trump than about Tillerson.

Trump’s response to all of this has been predictable. He has called Bolton a “traitor” and a “liar,” sued him (and lost), and spoken publicly about seizing the book profits. He’s enlisted White House loyalists to do the same. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also called Bolton a “traitor,” and trade advisor Peter Navarro called the book “deep swamp revenge porn.”

One thing is clear to the reader by the end of this book. John Bolton is no hero. He’s not a truth-teller. He’s not a whistleblower or a martyr. He’s a jilted lover taking one last potshot at the partner who betrayed him. This is his revenge. It’ll soon be forgotten.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

America Is Exceptional in All the Wrong Ways

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

25 June 20

s our incompetent president flounders in the face of crises – leading the worst coronavirus response in the industrialized world, and seeking to crush nationwide protests for black lives – the hard truth about this country comes into focus: America is not exceptional, but it is the exception.

No other industrialized nation was as woefully unprepared for the pandemic as was the United States. With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.

Why are we so different from other nations facing the same coronavirus threat? Why has everything gone so tragically wrong in America?

Part of it is Donald Trump. 

He and his corrupt administration repeatedly ignored warnings from public health experts and national security officials throughout January and February, only acting on March 16th after the stock market tanked. Researchers estimate that nearly 36,000 deaths could have been prevented if the United States had implemented social distancing policies just one week earlier.

No other industrialized nation has so drastically skirted responsibility by leaving it to subordinate units of government – states and cities – to buy ventilators and personal protective equipment.

In no other industrialized nation have experts in public health and emergency preparedness been muzzled and replaced by political cronies like Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who in turn has been advised by campaign donors and Fox News.

In no other industrialized nation has Covid-19 so swiftly eviscerated the incomes of the working class. Around the world, governments are providing generous income support to keep their unemployment rates low. Not in the U.S. Nearly 40 million Americans have lost their jobs so far, and more than 30% of American adults have been forced to cut back on buying food and risk going hungry.

At best, Americans have received one-time checks for $1,200, about a week’s worth of rent, groceries and utilities. After a massive backlog, people finally started collecting their expanded unemployment benefits – just in time for the expansion to expire with little to no chance of being renewed.

In no other nation is there such chaos about reopening. While Europe is opening slowly and carefully, the U.S. is opening chaotically, each state on its own. Some are lifting restrictions overnight.

And not even a global pandemic can overshadow the racism embedded in this country’s DNA. Even as black Americans are disproportionately dying from coronavirus, they have nonetheless been forced into the streets in an outpouring of grief and anger over decades of harsh policing and unjust killings. 

As protests erupted across the country in response to more police killings of unarmed black Americans, the protesters have been met with even more police violence. Firing tear gas into crowds of predominantly black protesters, in the middle of a pandemic caused by a respiratory virus that is already disproportionately hurting black communities, is unconscionably cruel.

Indeed, a lot of the responsibility rests with Trump and his hapless and corrupt collection of grifters, buffoons, sycophants, lobbyists and relatives.

But the problems at the core of our broken system, laid bare by this pandemic, have been plaguing this country long before Trump came along.

America is the only industrialized nation without guaranteed, universal healthcare.

No other industrialized nation insists on tying health care to employment, resulting in tens of millions of U.S. citizens losing their health insurance at the very moment they need it most.

We’re the only one out of 22 advanced nations that doesn’t give all workers some form of paid sick leave.

Average wage growth in the United States has long lagged behind average wage growth in most other industrialized countries, even before the pandemic robbed Americans of their jobs and incomes. Since 1980, American workers’ share of total national income has dropped more than in any other rich nation.

And America also has the largest CEO-to-worker pay gap on the planet. In 1965, American CEOs were paid 20 times the typical worker. Today, American CEOs are paid 278 times the typical worker.

Not surprisingly, American workers are far less unionized than workers in other industrialized economies. Only 10.2 percent of all workers in America belong to a union, compared with more than 26% in Canada, 65% in Sweden, and 23% in Britain. With less unionization, American workers are easily overpowered by corporations, and can’t bargain for higher wages or better benefits.

So who and what’s to blame for the largest preventable loss of life in American history?

It’s not just Trump’s malicious incompetence.

It’s decades of America’s failure to provide its people the basic support they need, decades of putting corporations’ bottom lines ahead of workers’ paychecks, decades of letting the rich and powerful pull the strings as the rest of us barely get by.

This pandemic has exposed what has long been true: On the global stage, America is the exception, but not in the way we would like to believe.