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In the Name of Anti-Trumpism, Media Elevate a Lying Warmonger Bryce Greene ([link removed])


John Bolton with cover of his book

John Bolton with his White House memoir (cc photo: Gage Skidmore)

Opposing the current president is a worthy goal for anyone who wants a better world. But if that opposition is based on TV ratings and ad sales, then it is just as morally bankrupt as the president himself.

John Bolton’s new book, The Room Where It Happened, has earned him enormous amounts of free publicity for antagonizing the president. In their zeal to once again expose Trump as an all-around bad man, corporate media have elevated someone who should be condemned by a civilized society.

Bolton’s entire professional history should be enough to make him persona non grata in any respectable circles--from his work on the Buckley v. Vallejo case that legalized mega-spending on election campaigns (Intercept, 6/18/20 ([link removed]) ), to his efforts in the Reagan administration to dismantle regulations on advertising baby formula in the Global South (USA Today, 4/24/05 ([link removed]) ).

Bolton is most known for his hyper-militaristic foreign policy. During the George W. Bush years, he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the murderous US invasion of Iraq, a war that has been responsible for as many as 3 million deaths (AlterNet, 3/15/18 ([link removed]) ). He threatened international officials who got in his way, telling ([link removed]) one, “We know where your kids live.” In order to sell the war to the public, he told outright lies ([link removed]) to the public. Bolton has said that he has never regretted ([link removed]) his support for the war.

After he joined the current administration as National Security advisor in 2018, Bolton spearheaded some of the Trump White House’s most aggressive foreign policies. In the spring of 2018, he encouraged a massive strike to “eliminate Syria's air force” in response to alleged Syrian chemical weapon use (Vox, 4/16/18 ([link removed]) ). He was also a driving force behind Trump’s withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) weapons treaty (Washington Post, 10/19/18 ([link removed]) ).

Bolton was at the head of a massive campaign to delegitimize the government of Venezuela, part of the years-long American project of destroying Venezuela’s political stability through economic and public relations warfare (Time, 1/30/19 ([link removed]) ). Washington’s economic sanctions killed an estimated 40,000 people in the country in 2017–18 alone (Independent, 4/26/19 ([link removed]) ; CEPR, 4/19 ([link removed]) ).
New York Times: To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran

The New York Times (3/26/15 ([link removed]) ) promoted Bolton's call for an unprovoked attack on Iran to eliminate its nonexistent ([link removed]) nuclear weapons program.

Bolton has also long been at the forefront of the neoconservative call for war with Iran. He has accepted tens of thousands ([link removed]) of dollars from a group of Iranian exiles known as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), dedicated to overthrowing the current government; the group was officially designated by the US as a terrorist group from 1997 to 2012, due to a long record of bombing and assassination campaigns (Politico, 12/13/16 ([link removed]) ). Eight months before joining the Trump administration, Bolton told ([link removed]) the group that regime change in Iran should be the US’s stated policy, and that “before 2019, we will celebrate here in Tehran.”

In 2015, the New York Times (3/26/15 ([link removed]) ) published Bolton’s opinion piece, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” In addition to failing to disclose Bolton’s ties with the MEK, the piece contained multiple factual errors (Intercept, 4/4/15 ([link removed]) ). According to Jon Schwartz of the Intercept, the Times initially linked one of Bolton’s key claims to a source that contradicted the claim, only fixing it after Schwartz pointed it out.

Despite this long history of lying, and advocating a violent and aggressive foreign policy, Bolton’s latest project has been attacking the Trump administration for its gross incompetence and corruption. Media allowed Bolton to frame himself as a whistleblower trying to stop the lawlessness of an out-of-control Trump administration.
NYT: Trump Poses ‘Danger for the Republic’ if Re-elected, John Bolton Charges

For the New York Times (6/21/20 ([link removed]) ), Bolton's main importance seemed to be his pertinence to the 2020 election.

Bolton's central importance to corporate media is illustrated by a New York Times headline: "Trump Poses ‘Danger for the Republic’ if Re-Elected, John Bolton Charges" (6/21/20 ([link removed]) ). Bolton’s usefulness as a club to bash Trump renders all of his past deeds beyond mention.

The Times (6/18/20 ([link removed]) ) provided a summary of the main takeaways from Bolton’s book. One of the most prominent was that Bolton professes to substantiate key accusations from the House impeachment of Trump. This is not a surprising revelation; Bolton's opposition to the administration's efforts to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden was a major topic of discussion during the impeachment hearings. (For what it’s worth, Bolton also argues ([link removed]) that impeachment was a political stunt rather than a serious inquiry, offering this as an explanation for why he didn’t testify about it at the time.) The rest of the book’s revelations center around the familiar narrative of Trumpian disregard for established norms and rules.

There has been debate about Bolton’s decision not to testify at the impeachment trial without a subpoena. According to CNN (6/17/20 ([link removed]) ), Bolton “betrayed his country” by neglecting to blow the whistle on Trump and Ukraine earlier. Of course, there was no mention of Bolton’s history of leading (or trying to lead) the US into deadly wars.

These past several days, substantive policy issues were mostly drowned out by political gossip and pointing out the most obvious of Trump’s flaws. But on the few topics that Bolton has discussed, he feels that Trump hasn’t been hawkish enough.

In 2019, when Trump decided to call off a strike that could have killed ([link removed]) 150 Iranians, Bolton felt ([link removed]) this aversion to war was “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any president do” (despite the fact that a war with Iran could make Iraq look like a cakewalk ([link removed]) ). On Trump’s ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela, Bolton believed ([link removed]) that Trump wasn’t sufficiently undermining the current elected ([link removed]) Venezuelan government.

Last week Bolton had some of his highest visibility ever, with interviews all across the media. ABC News (6/21/20 ([link removed]) ) had a much-hyped special, while USA Today (6/26/20 ([link removed]) ) offered a similar interview. Several political cartoons ([link removed]) have depicted Bolton as a significant challenge to Trump’s administration.
Stephen Colbert with John Bolton.

Stephen Colbert (Late Show, 6/23/20 ([link removed]) ) laughing with John Bolton.

Late-night television personalities ([link removed]) touted Bolton’s book. Bolton even appeared on CBS’s Late Show (6/23/20 ([link removed]) ) with Stephen Colbert; the two ended up sharing laughs, much like Colbert had earlier rehabilitated Trump press secretary Sean Spicer (FAIR.org, 9/19/17 ([link removed]) ). Mother Jones (6/24/20 ([link removed]) ) called this interview “The Interview John Bolton Really Deserves,” because Colbert took the bold step of calling him “naive” for believing that Trump would follow the rules.

Bolton’s main contribution to the national discourse is exemplified by what he said to George Stephanopolos on ABC's Good Morning America (6/22/20 ([link removed]) ):

[Trump’s] policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States.

Giving Bolton a platform to express his disdain for Trump also allows him to turn a realistic critique of Trump foreign policy on its head: Rather than being too violent ([link removed]) and militaristic ([link removed]) , the problem is that Trump is “incoherent” and “unfocused” in his violence and militarism.

Bolton also made appearances on the two ([link removed]) main Sunday talk shows. Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press (6/28/20 ([link removed]) ) asked Bolton whether or not Trump “is afraid to make Putin mad, because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he doesn’t want to make him mad for 2020?”

Bolton’s name is reaching peak ([link removed] 5-y&q=John Bolton) levels of interest, according to Google Trends, and his book even made it to the top ([link removed]) of the New York Times Bestsellers list. The book follows in a long line of anti-Trump insider White House accounts; Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury ([link removed]) , Bod Woodward's Fear ([link removed]) and Omarosa Manigault Newman's Unhinged ([link removed]) each hit the top of the New York Times Bestsellers list.

In our pop culture world, Bolton, like many prominent public policymakers, is most importantly a celebrity. Sure, he may have had a troubled past, but that is a distant backstory to this current season. Regardless of his past disregard for human life, he is a new man, and has ridden the media wave into the halls of the anti-Trump #resistance.

Bolton’s ideas are dangerous to America and the rest of the world. Was rehabilitating the public image of a warmonger and elevating his voice really worth telling us, for the thousandth time, that Donald Trump runs the White House like a selfish child?


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