The Room Where It Happened

Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. Prior to his political career, Trump was a real estate developer and a television personality who hosted the reality TV show The Apprentice. Most of the book is comprised of Bolton’s impressions of Trump, gleaned from private conservations, Situation Room meetings, and multilateral summits with other world leaders.

Bolton doesn’t weigh in much on Trump’s domestic policies, focusing instead on the president’s approach to foreign policy. As the book progresses, Bolton identifies a few consistent themes of Trump’s foreign policy. Most galling is Trump’s persistent tendency to equate his personal or electoral interests with the national interest, a dynamic that an “Americanist” like Bolton finds appalling. Bolton sees this at work most dramatically in Trump’s relationships with Turkish President Erdogan, Chinese President Xi, and Ukrainian President Zelensky.

A second major theme is Trump’s affinity for authoritarian strongmen, particularly Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and the aforementioned Erdogan and Xi. This trend is even more baffling to Bolton, given that what Trump most seeks in these relationships is flattery and camaraderie, which serve neither Trump’s interests nor the national interest.

Bolton is also struck by Trump’s impulsiveness. This is most evident in the president’s last-minute reversal of a retaliatory strike against Iran, which Bolton calls “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do” (403). Also of concern to Bolton is what he perceives as Trump’s callousness over US casualties, military or otherwise. He points out Trump’s visible discomfort with meeting wounded veterans at Walter Reed. The author also describes one of Trump’s favorite “hobbyhorses”: that it costs more to fight in Afghanistan than to rebuild the World Trade Center, as if the loss of human life is irrelevant.

Over time, Trump grows less and less receptive to Bolton’s agenda. Eager to live up to his campaign promise to “end the endless wars,” Trump succeeds in greatly diminishing the US presence in Syria. He is prevented from doing the same in Afghanistan, mostly due to backlash from congressional Republicans rather than Bolton’s protestations. Trump and Bolton’s working relationship becomes even more frayed during the Ukraine affair, as Bolton works tirelessly to convince the president to release military assistance to the country. Ultimately, this affair results in Trump’s impeachment in late 2019, though the Senate acquits him in early 2020.

As of 2020, Mike Pompeo is the US secretary of state. A former congressman and US Army captain, Pompeo was appointed CIA director shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Following Rex Tillerson’s exit in April 2018, Trump elevated Pompeo to the position of secretary of state.

For much of the book, Pompeo is one of Bolton’s closest confidants and allies. They work together to encourage Trump to release military assistance to Ukraine, to avoid major concessions in talks with Kim, and to launch a retaliatory strike against Iran after the downing of a $150 million drone. At moments of particularly low morale—for instance, when Trump impulsively cancels the strike against Iran—Pompeo and Bolton commiserate over their shared urge to resign.

Despite these moments of collaboration and camaraderie, Bolton paints Pompeo as far less eager to call out Trump for his failures of leadership. For example, when Trump preempts the US’s withdrawal from the INF treaty with an impulsive news conference, and Pompeo calls the move “horrific,” Bolton refers to this as “a rare occasion of Pompeo’s being explicitly critical of something Trump did” (164).

Over time, Bolton and Pompeo’s relationship frays. This first occurs during the Venezuela crisis, when Bolton bristles at Pompeo’s eagerness to close the US embassy in Caracas. Bolton is also annoyed when Pompeo cuts him and the rest of the NSC out of Taliban negotiations in what Bolton believes is an attempt to take all the credit for the deal. Pompeo’s continued reluctance to alienate Trump or his supporters, combined with his attempts to position himself at the center of potentially huge deals, casts him as an ambitious yet cautious political operator. This depiction lends credence to the widespread belief that Pompeo plans to run for president in 2024.

Along with Bolton and Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly could be viewed as a member of the second generation of the “axis of adults” that exists to rein in Trump’s worst impulses. A former marine, Kelly rose through the ranks to become a four-star general until his retirement from the military in 2016. The following year, Trump appointed him as his first secretary of homeland security before elevating him to the chief of staff position in July 2017, replacing Reince Preibus.

In Bolton’s telling, Kelly is a disciplined and virtuous public servant who does his best to instill that same discipline and virtue within Trump’s chaotic administration. By the time Bolton arrives, however, Kelly already has a sense of resigned exhaustion hanging over his head. After an early briefing with Trump on Japan that quickly devolves into a rant about Pearl Harbor, Kelly tells Bolton, “You’re going to be very frustrated in this job” (62).

As the father of a son who was killed in Afghanistan, Kelly is especially disturbed by Trump’s apparent lack of respect for US soldiers. After briefings in which Trump is particularly disparaging to American troops, Kelly often solemnly leaves the White House to visit his son’s grave. Having finally reached a breaking point, Kelly resigns in December 2018.

Kim Jong Un is the Supreme Leader of North Korea and one of the US’s foremost adversaries, according to Bolton. While many of the details of Kim’s oppression are unknown to Western observers, he is routinely accused of human rights violations, including executing his own people. For example, after his Hanoi summit with the United States ends in a stalemate, Kim reportedly kills one of his chief negotiators, highlighting the very real human cost of Trump’s half-cocked approach toward foreign policy.

Trump’s dealings with Kim involve a series of meetings and incidents that Bolton finds very disturbing yet indicative of Trump’s foreign policy doctrine. Through fawning letters, Kim easily plays on Trump’s vanity to win a summit with the US. Bolton feels that regardless of whether any concessions are made at the meeting, the summit itself is a symbolic win for Kim that nets the US little in return. Meanwhile, Trump views the meeting as an exercise in publicity: either he will reach an unlikely historic deal that cements his legacy, or he will walk away and look tough in his supporters’ eyes.

Jim Mattis is a retired US general who served as Trump’s secretary of defense from the start of his presidency until January 2019. Bolton views Mattis as a savvy bureaucratic operator who uses various tactics to push Trump to follow an agenda that runs counter to the president’s. Unlike Bolton, he tends to downplay the threat posed by Iran, to the author’s great dismay. Bolton also bristles at Mattis’s tendency to use strategic leaks to advance his own agenda in the White House. Yet despite their differences, the two men are on friendly terms. They meet for breakfast once a week to discuss pressing national security issues and find themselves agreeing on numerous topics, particularly Syria.

Mattis eventually runs afoul of the president for his perceived failure to make progress in Afghanistan. After his high-profile departure—which is precipitated by Trump’s unexpected announcement to withdraw troops from Syria—Mattis becomes a frequent target of Trump’s angry rants in the Situation Room. To Bolton, Trump’s personal resentment toward Mattis colors the president’s views and decision-making with regard to Afghanistan, with ill effects.

Xi Jinping is the president of China, another major adversary in Bolton’s view. Despite Xi’s carefully cultivated image as a responsible global steward, Bolton sees him as a ruthless autocrat who is guilty of human rights abuses with regard to Tibet and the Uighurs. Bolton is also deeply mistrustful of Xi’s imperialistic designs on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea region.

While Trump is tough on China in public, Bolton says the president projects great weakness to Xi in private summits. In his zeal to reach a trade agreement, Trump approves of Xi’s detainment of 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps and begs for Xi’s help in winning the 2020 election, two incidents Bolton finds both tactically and ethically objectionable.

Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia, an adversary who, according to Bolton and US intelligence community consensus, worked to disrupt the 2016 election in favor of Trump. Bolton describes Putin as “totally in control, calm, self-confident, whatever Russia’s domestic economic and political challenges might have been. […] I was not looking forward to leaving him alone in a room with Trump” (132).

Due to political considerations, Trump’s interactions with Putin are fairly limited during the time frame covered by the book. Yet their sole one-on-one meeting in Helsinki produces one of the most controversial moments of Trump’s presidency: the president’s admission that he believes Putin over his own intelligence community when it comes to Russian election-meddling. Although Trump later walks back his comments, the Helsinki conference greatly undermines Bolton’s efforts to combat Russian election interference.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the president of Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States. Despite Turkey’s membership in this alliance, many of Erdogan’s objectives run counter to US interests, according to Bolton. For example, Bolton believes that Erdogan wants the US to leave Syria so he can declare war on the Kurds, a key ally in the fight against ISIS in that region.

Like Trump’s relationship with Kim, Bolton characterizes the president’s relationship with Erdogan as a “bromance.” Given Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies, this is consistent with Trump’s friendly approach toward authoritarian strongmen around the world. In an effort to improve his relationship with Erdogan and win a key concession that would help Trump politically, the president endeavors to interfere with a US investigation into Turkey’s state bank, Halkbank. This gambit foreshadows later obstructive efforts by Trump involving China and Ukraine.