Former national security adviser John Bolton presented a "classless display" with his extensive ABC News interview over the weekend about his new memoir, and if he didn't like how President Donald Trump handled policy, he should have stepped down, ex-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Monday.
"What I saw mostly in the interview was that John Bolton didn't like how the president worked," Mulvaney said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "He didn't like the way the president interacted with Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Didn't like the way he interacted with Vladimir Putin. Didn't like the way he interacted with President XI (Jinping) from China. Which is just outrageous. If you don't like the way the president acts, either you quit, or you run against him."
However, as a "member of the inner circle of his team, if you don't like his style, you don't run and write a book about it and make a million bucks," said Mulvaney, who now serves as the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Bolton eventually submitted his resignation, when Trump last September forced him out after several disagreements on Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and a host of other foreign policy decisions.
"It was really outrageous to see John sort of minimize his relationship with the president like that," said Mulvaney. "It was, again, it was difficult for someone who is on the inside to watch last night."
One of the main claims in the book is that Trump tried to encourage the Chinese to purchase U.S. agricultural goods to help him win reelection, but Mulvaney insisted that Trump had tried to encourage the Chinese to buy more American goods all the time. However, to try to "weave them" as a criminal act is "completely outrageous," he added.
"John was in that meeting and did not complain to a soul, not to me about the meeting or White House counsel," he said. "Not to anybody until the book comes out that he even raised the issue . . . none of us saw what John says he saw in that room. So, I think it undoes John's credibility considerably and rightly so."
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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