In his first remarks about John Bolton’s book ‘The Room Where It Happened,’ President Trump, pictured at the White House on Wednesday, defended his decision to reverse penalties on a pair of Chinese companies as he sought a trade deal with Beijing.
Photo: saul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesWASHINGTON—President Trump dismissed the critiques from his former national security adviser John Bolton as lies and exaggerations from a disgruntled employee.
In an interview Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump said there were no strains on his relationship with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and denied that he gave his blessing to Chinese President Xi Jinping to build detention camps for the country’s Uighur Muslim population, as Mr. Bolton recounts in his book.
“He is a liar,” Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal, adding that “everybody in the White House hated John Bolton.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bolton declined to comment.
Mr. Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is a stinging rebuke of a sitting president by one of his own former senior advisers. The U.S. on Tuesday sued Mr. Bolton for breach of contract, seeking to block the June 23 publication of the 577-page book, a copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
In his first remarks about the book, the president defended his decision to reverse penalties on a pair of Chinese companies as he sought a trade deal with Beijing.
In his book, Mr. Bolton described Mr. Trump as easily swayed by authoritarian leaders and often the subject of scorn among his own advisers. Mr. Bolton says Mr. Trump repeatedly prioritized a potential trade deal with China and his own political interests over other issues, including enforcement of U.S. sanctions and human-rights concerns.
Mr. Trump said of Mr. Bolton’s account that he gave his blessing to Mr. Xi to continue building camps for Uighurs: Muslim minorities, as Mr. Bolton says in the book. The Trump administration had been considering sanctions on China for its treatment of Uighurs, more than a million of whom have been detained without trial in the past three years, according to academic researchers. But Mr. Trump didn’t want to upset trade negotiations, Mr. Bolton said.
“That’s not true,” Mr. Trump said about Mr. Bolton’s description of his conversation with Mr. Xi.
Mr. Trump then pointed out that he signed legislation earlier on Wednesday calling for sanctions on China over the camps. “I could have killed that very easily,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump didn’t deny that he agreed to lift penalties on two Chinese companies as a way to seek favor with Mr. Xi in the trade negotiations, as Mr. Bolton says in his book.
Mr. Bolton said in the book that he and other staff persuaded Mr. Trump to reinstate a ban on Huawei doing business with U.S. companies. “Nobody has ever been so tough on a company as I have to Huawei,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.
Mr. Trump said his decision to ease off ZTE, the Chinese telecom giant that had been prosecuted for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea, came with a $1.3 billion fine and changes to the company’s board.
“ZTE was my deal,” Mr. Trump said. “It was an unbelievable deal.”
Mr. Trump said he has a “very good relationship” with Mr. Pompeo, who Mr. Bolton writes has repeatedly considered resigning from the administration. In one passage, Mr. Bolton said that during a meeting Mr. Pompeo passed him a note referring to the president that said, “He is so full of shit.”
“I would doubt that,” Mr. Trump said. “Does he have the note? Let me see the note.”
Mr. Trump said it was Mr. Bolton who struggled to make relationships in the White House, a point that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows echoed. “Nothing he touched ever happened, because he couldn’t find consensus,” said Mr. Meadows, who was serving in the House and was an informal Trump adviser during Mr. Bolton’s White House tenure.
From the Archives
“He wasn’t liked at all, and wasn’t respected very much,” Mr. Trump said. “And as we got to know him, he was respected less and less. Personally, I thought he was crazy.”
Mr. Trump said he kept Mr. Bolton on staff as a negotiation tool, to instill fear in other world leaders. Mr. Trump said he blocked Mr. Bolton several times from pushing the U.S. into another war, but declined to give an example.
“I don’t want to say—I’ll have to say when I write my book,” Mr. Trump said. “But nobody cares about Bolton.”
Mr. Trump said he soured on Mr. Bolton early in the administration, when he asked his aide to defend the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Bolton told him he still thought it was the right thing to do.
“He could not explain it to me,” Mr. Trump said. “So I said, ‘Do you just say that to make yourself feel good, or do you say that because you really believe it?’ ” Mr. Trump recounted. “He said, ‘I really believe.’ I said, ‘Well, then you’ve lost me. Because it’s just wrong.’ ”
Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"back" - Google News
June 18, 2020 at 09:43AM
https://ift.tt/2UWzdYH
‘He Is a Liar’: Trump Pushes Back on Bolton Book - The Wall Street Journal
"back" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QNOfxc
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "‘He Is a Liar’: Trump Pushes Back on Bolton Book - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment