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The Screaming Moderate

John Bolton's timing

6/18/2020

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This isn’t a perfect world.

If it was, John Bolton would have testified to the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate would have voted to find the President guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

But, all together now, this is not a perfect world.

Even if Bolton had testified, the enablers in the U.S. Senate were not about to convict the President earlier this year. It was pre-coronavirus and, thus, pre-the economy collapsing. And before Black Lives Matter became a serious cry from a diverse cross-section of Americans calling for justice and an end to racism.

And if you think Bolton’s testimony would have convinced the Republican senators that Trump was guilty of putting himself ahead of his country, I have a bridge over troubled waters to sell you.

People can, and are, criticizing Bolton for supposedly putting the millions he was paid for his book ahead of his duty as a citizen and testifying. There probably is some truth in that.

Many Trump supporters are simply saying Bolton is lying.  Maybe. But while he clearly was not happy serving Trump (in two different jobs) he definitely lost any satisfaction in his job when he saw Trump wouldn’t do things his way (which may have been the right way, who knows?). And when he saw Trump doing corrupt things like trying to get the Chinese to help him win re-election.

When you read that section of Bolton's book it does begin to explain why, when the virus was growing in this country, Trump was saying such positive things about Chinese President Shi.

And, Bolton may be a truth teller. Many non-Trump supporters have read the stories about Bolton’s book and asked, “what’s new?” What’s new is that a former senior advisor to the President is putting his name to the allegations. That’s a major thing.

When he said he’d respond to a subpoena, Bolton was either putting sales of his book ahead of the country’s interests or honestly wanted to wait for a court decision on a colleague questioning if he had to answer a subpoena on the topic. One could make a case he had an obligation to do that to see what the courts decided.

Bottom line – it doesn’t matter. And Bolton may have fallen into the perfect timing for the claims in his book to be accepted by some voters. The book comes after former Defense Secretary retired Gen. James Mattis made public his belief that Trump is not worthy of the office. And it comes after former Chief of Staff and retired Gen. John Kelly backed up Mattis comments. Earlier in his presidency many voters apparently discounted former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling Trump a “moron.” Bolton’s book seems to back up that claim.

The book comes while the coronavirus is still a significant threat even if Trump and his minions are saying it’s been defeated. It comes while the economy is still making up its mind what to do. It comes while many of us are still afraid to go to a restaurant or into retail stores.

In other words, in my mind, it comes at the perfect time to possibly finally undo the Trump presidency and lead to his losing the election in November.

Now, there is plenty of time before November for all kinds of things that could and will happen between now and then.

For example:
  • The coronavirus cases in the country could spike again.
  • The economy could stay in horrible shape.
  • Trump’s re-election numbers could continue to be shaky though the election.
Or,
  • There might actually be a legitimate vaccine to battle the virus
  • And, there might actually be a proven treatment to cure people with the virus
  • The economy may show sufficient signs that it is recovering
  • The millions of people thrown out of work could be rehired
  • And Trump will put his opposition research (the truth and the contrived) to use against Joe Biden.
No one knows what the future holds in this regard.

It may be that Bolton fell into the perfect time to tell his truths about what he witnessed while national security advisor. It doesn’t take a lot of voters to switch from their 2016 position of backing Trump and their 2020 view that he is not up to the job  and Joe Biden is a nice guy.

Whichever way you fall on that question will determine if this turns out to be a perfect world.


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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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