The Wall Street Journal yesterday:
Frank Bruni begins his The NY Times OpEd:
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President Trump’s reaction to the leak of incriminating details in John Bolton’s forthcoming book shocked me. Not the part where the president said that Bolton was making up a Ukraine quid pro quo in the service of the best-seller list — that he was lying for lucre. Trump sees that transaction everywhere he looks, because he sees it first and foremost in the mirror.
No, I was surprised that the president didn’t dispute knowing Bolton, or at least didn’t say that he was so slightly acquainted with his own former national security adviser that he couldn’t pick him — chinchilla-bushy mustache and all — out of a lineup. That’s Trump’s favorite ploy. Ask Michael Cohen, Anthony Scaramucci, Prince Andrew, Stormy Daniels, Gordon Sondland, Lev Parnas. Fall into disrepute, cross Trump or claim to have the goods on him and you’re wiped clean from his memory, no matter the existence of contradictory forensics. Ivanka, beware. You’re one bad manicure away from paternal amnesia.
He finishes with
Of late he seems to be having a meltdown. I attribute it to his realization that his reputation and belief in his own rectitude won’t survive Trump. He’s assessing the bargain he made and understanding how completely his ambition eclipsed his integrity. It’s hell when you’re revealed to yourself.
Bolton, meanwhile, is probably feeling pretty content. He knows how badly the Trump presidency will be judged and has positioned himself on the right side of history — this time around. Maybe bitterness brought him here, maybe ego, maybe this quaint old thing called patriotism. He survived Trump. I’d read that book.
In “Anatomy of a ‘smear’: How John Bolton became a target of the pro-Trump Internet” Isaac Stanley Becker writes in the Washington Post:
The headline drew little notice when it appeared last spring on a blog called “Disobedient Media.”
“John Bolton Took Money From Banks Tied To Cartels, Terrorists, Iran,” it read.
On Monday, the blog entry gained sudden popularity. That’s because its central claim — based only on innuendo and half-truths — proved useful to President Trump’s most fervent online supporters, who rushed to discredit the former United Nations ambassador and national security adviser as news broke that his forthcoming book would corroborate accounts that the president held up aid to Ukraine to advance investigations into his domestic political rivals.
Here are some points from the article:
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- branding him as a traitor and member of the “deep state,” a reference to a conspiracy theory favored by the president that a shadow government is working to thwart him — made use of misleading text as well as eye-catching memes.
- “disgruntled, fired employee who now has a motive, a multimillion-dollar motive, to inflame the situation.”
- Trump retweeted a post a from Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network calling Bolton a “Rejected Neocon” and the “Deep State’s Last Desperate Act.”
- That move, experts say, showcased how personal insults driven by online conspiracy theories — which Trump harnessed on his path to the presidency — remain fundamental to his hold on his base.
- The attacks are successful, he said, because Trump elevates them, “hitting back fairly strongly with a smear that pushes back on the allegation without really addressing it.”
- A blogger drew up a meme pairing an image of the former national security adviser with the text, “Turned his ‘drug deal’ into a book deal”
- The nickname (“Book Deal Bolton.”) spread widely on social media during the day, amplified by pro-Trump influencers with tens of thousands of followers. The epithet “Book Deal Bolton” appeared on screen Monday night on Fox News behind Hannity.
- Lou Dobb said Bolton had been “reduced to a tool for the radical Dems and the deep state.” He asked “Do you see the pattern here with Mr. Bolton?”
- A “Supporter of President Trump” pointed implausibly to the “deep state.”
- ... the conservative columnist Todd Starnes, a former Fox News Radio host, was claiming without evidence or explanation that, “These Bolton allegations smell like Deep State swamp gas.”
Over at FoxNews we have to wonder how long Andrew Napolitano is going to last:
Andrew Napolitano Blasts Trump Allies: Bolton Was A ‘Conservative Icon Until 2 Days Ago’ — The Fox News legal analyst torched GOP senators for turning on Bolton, a longtime Republican, after his bombshell allegations about Trump.
“We know John,” Napolitano, a former judge, said. “He used to work here. He’s a very intelligent, strong-willed, meticulously honest person.”
Bolton was “a conservative icon until two days ago,” he went on. “Now the things they’re saying about him, it sounds like they’re talking about Nancy Pelosi. But he has come out with something that goes to the core of the case.”
Napolitano argued Tuesday that because Trump’s legal team had chosen to argue the facts of the case, instead of simply stating that the charge was not an impeachable offense, Bolton’s account blew a hole in their defense. (He added that, for the record, he does think it was an impeachable offense.)
“Now that this witness at the core of everything who had personal conversations with just the president has come forward with a version 180 degrees from theirs, I think they’re stuck with this,” Napolitano said. “I think many Republicans are now going to say, ‘We have to hear from Bolton.’”
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.Update: Just now on Fox News:
‘Let’s find out the truth’: Fox News host battles Jim Jordan over why there should be witnesses in a trial
You have to be a member of Daily Beast’s fee service to read all of Rick Wilson’s story but you get the idea from the title. Here’s what you can see for free:
This is the lead story on Slate:
When it comes to following U.S. law and protocol, Bolton is a fairly straight arrow.
First, in his various stints in government, Bolton could be conniving and contentious. During the George W. Bush administration, he acted as a mole inside the State Department, informing Vice President Dick Cheney whenever Secretary of State Colin Powell was about to commit an act of arms control. He also tried to derail the careers of intelligence officials who disputed his view… Yet amid all the fights he started and enemies he made in the Bush administration, he was not known to be an outright fabricator. And, as a lawyer who valued the written record as a tool of defense or intimidation, he always took very careful notes.
Second, disruptive as he could be, he has always regarded himself as a member of the foreign policy establishment. His goals could often be self-serving, but he saw them as aligned with the assertion of American power in the world. This is far from the same thing as Trump’s l’état, c’est moi style, in which U.S. interests are seen as synonymous with the interests of the Trump Organization. Bolton would certainly have been repelled by Trump’s striking personal deals with Xi and Erdogan—not because they’re dictators, but because Trump was subverting foreign policy for his own interests.
Third, during the House impeachment hearings, some officials testified that, when they told Bolton about Trump’s attempted quid pro quo with Ukraine, he told them to go talk to the NSC lawyer. He also was famously said to describe Rudy Giuliani’s schemes with corrupt Ukrainians as a “drug deal.” This is consistent with his claim in the book that he talked with Barr—the top law enforcement official—about Trump’s dealings with Xi and Erdogan. In other words, when it comes to following U.S. law and protocol, Bolton is a fairly straight arrow.
Here’s a montage I made from MSNBC when they reported on how Republicans are attacking Bolton.
Giuliani has the best quote “he’s a backstabber” which says more in what it doesn’t say than what it does. In other words, he doesn’t say he’s a liar! Here’s his CBS interview:
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, similarly attacked Bolton in an interview on “CBS This Morning” that aired Wednesday, calling him a “backstabber” and a “swamp character.”
“He never said to me, ‘I’ve got a problem with what you are doing in Ukraine.’ Never once, never winked, never sent me a little note,” Giuliani said. “He is a personal friend, I thought. So here’s the only conclusion I can come to, and it’s a harsh one. And I feel very bad about it. He’s a backstabber.”
Trump is clearly shaken by the prospect of John Bolton testifying to the truth. Here is his tweet from an hour ago:
He also retweet this from last night:
In his gilded cage with bars of denial I think Trump is increasingly desperate.
He isn’t afraid of being removed from office by his cowering Senate sycophants. Poll watcher that he is, he is afraid that he is already significantly behind all the Democrats and that Bolton’s testimony could be the proverbial nail in the coffin, or as I’d like to think of it as the stake in Dracula’s heart,