John Bolton, the national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, Wednesday on Newsmax defended comments he made this week about having helped to plan attempted coups in other countries.
"I think there are a lot of snowflakes out there that don’t understand what you need to do to protect the United States," Bolton said on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now." "I'm not going to get into specifics. I did write about Venezuela in my memoir, and I think that any president that's not willing to do what it takes to protect the interests of the American people needs to have some counseling."
Bolton told CNN Tuesday that he had "helped plan" attempted coups in other countries, while arguing that Trump's actions before the Jan. 6 incidents at the Capitol did not constitute an attempt at a coup.
"As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état, not here but other places, it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what he did,” Bolton said. He later mentioned Venezuela, where the United States had backed the opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Bolton on Wednesday also discussed President Joe Biden's trip to the Middle East, saying he believes there will be a "series of difficult meetings" between the president, the Saudis, and other Gulf states, like the United Arab Emirates.
"The Biden administration has been alienated very badly by its unrelenting determination to get back in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal," said Bolton. "That deal was a mistake when we made it. The Trump administration pulled out of in 2018, quite rightly, but Biden has spent a year and a half trying to get back into it. The Saudis, the other Gulf Arab states, like Israel, see Iran as a threat to their peace and security."
This means that Biden will "hear it pretty straightforwardly behind closed doors" that they think the effort to "pacify" Iran won't succeed.
Meanwhile, when Bolton was asked Wednesday what he thinks the biggest threat is to the United States, he said China and Russia pose a major threat, with China as the biggest danger, but there are also threats from the Middle East, threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, and the national security threat on the United States' southern border.
The border threat comes not only from migrants but "adversaries of ours who can see that the border is open," said Bolton. "It's a real danger, something that the Biden administration seems unwilling to acknowledge is even a problem."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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