I made it through. I can’t believe I read the whole thing. It started out bad and stayed that way. I’ve had a low opinion of Bolton since I first learned of him during the Baby Bush administration. His book has significantly lowered that opinion. Regular Shades will return tomorrow (if I’ve recovered from my hangover by then).
Observations and quotes from the text
Afghanistan (Chapter 13)
tRump and Pompeo push for a deal with the Taliban. The deal is, according to Bolton, a very bad idea. Bolton lobbies tRump. tRump decides to hedge committing to signing any deal by inviting the President of Afghanistan and the leaders of the Taliban to Camp David, where he can make one of his wonderful international deals (like the one with Kim in Korea). tRump wants the meeting to happen quickly, so they schedule it a couple of days before the 9/11 remembrance ceremonies. Luckily for tRump the Taliban kill eleven people in a terrorist attack in Kabul. tRump cancels the meeting and Bolton breathes a sigh of relief — until tRump tweets about the cancelled secret meeting. Never let it be said that tRump is not a tone deaf, clueless moron.
“tRump repeated one of his hobbyhorses, namely that it was cheaper to rebuild the World Trade Center than to fight in Afghanistan, inconveniently ignoring the loss of life in the 9/11 attacks, not just the cost of rebuilding.”
Bolton is unhappy because tRump want to either charge any country hosting US military bases cost plus 50% or just bring all he troops home. tRump’s goal of turning the US military into a profit center by renting out American soldiers as mercenaries is one of those tRump whims that has his high level advisors scrambling for shiny objects to distract him with.
Ukraine (Chapter 14)
Well folks, this is it. The final chapter where all is made clear, the truth is told and tRump is finally vanquished. Yeah, not so much. Calling this book a letdown is several hundred miles short of how bad it is. All those extra juicy details that could be used to drive the last nails into tRump’s political coffin? With one exception (see below), they aren’t here. If tRump hadn’t blown the COVID-19 response, tanked the economy and managed to make himself into Bunker Boi, the Bigliest Failure all by himself, Bolton’s fart of a book in tRump’s general direction would have been laughed off any bestseller list as a waste of time.
What does Bolton tell us? tRump is a gullible fool. Giuliani probably has an ulterior motive for feeding all that absurd conspiracy theory crap to tRump. Giuliani got Yovanovich fired. Pompeo is lazy, unwilling to stand up for his people and complicit in tRump’s idiocy. Fiona Hill’s testimony with regard to Bolton is correct. Chargé Bill Taylor’s testimony was correct. Mulvaney is a sleaze and he’s the one who kept pushing Sondland’s access. Bolton likes Barr and Pence (that’s enough for them to be removed from office all by itself). tRump linked the hold in funding to the bogus investigations. This is all stuff we already knew (except the Sondland/Mulvaney linkage).
“Throughout my West Wing tenure, Trump wanted to do what he wanted to do, based on what he knew and what he saw as his own best personal interests. And in Ukraine, he seemed finally able to have it all.”
On Nikki Haley: “When Pompeo and I reviewed all this subsequently, it was plain that we were once again seeing how Haley operated when Tillerson was Secretary of State: as a free electron. That would change in a month with her departure, and Pompeo and I saw it exactly the same, that her successor, whoever it turned out to be, would not operate that way. “Light as a feather,” as Pompeo described her in a subsequent conversation.”
On Giuliani: “I raised with them something I had asked about before, with either Cipollone or Eisenberg: whether Giuliani had ethical problems under the lawyers’ Code of Professional Responsibility for using one attorney-client relationship to advance the interests of another client, a dynamic that I thought might be at work in his dealings on behalf of Trump. I said I thought it was an ethical violation to do so, but I was in the minority; the others did agree it was “slimy.” So much for legal ethics.”
tRump Being tRump (It doesn’t get any clearer than this)
I spoke with Kupperman, who had attended Trump’s debriefing earlier that day (it was still May 23 in Washington when we spoke) from our delegation to Zelensky’s inaugural: Perry, Sondland, Volker, and Senator Ron Johnson. It was a classic. “I don’t want to have any fucking thing to do with Ukraine,” said Trump, per Kupperman. “They fucking attacked me. I can’t understand why. Ask Joe diGenova, he knows all about it. They tried to fuck me. They’re corrupt. I’m not fucking with them.” All this, he said, pertained to the Clinton campaign’s efforts, aided by Hunter Biden, to harm Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Volker tried to intervene to say something pertinent about Ukraine, and Trump replied, “I don’t give a shit.”
Perry said we couldn’t allow a failed state, presumably a Ukraine where effective government had broken down, and Trump said, “Talk to Rudy and Joe.”
“Give me ninety days,” Perry tried again, but Trump interrupted, saying, “Ukraine tried to take me down. I’m not fucking interested in helping them,” although he relented to say Zelensky could visit him in the White House, but only if he was told how Trump felt in the matter. “I want the fucking DNC server,” said Trump, returning to the fray, adding, “Okay, you can have ninety days. But I have no fucking interest in meeting with him.” ... Senator Johnson told me several weeks later, regarding this Trump meeting, “I was pretty shocked by the President’s response.” I thought it sounded like just another day at the office.
The book does have a happy ending. John Bolton is no longer working for the government.
The Epilogue
We are subjected to several pages of tortured reasoning wherein Bolton blames Congressional Democrats for his failure to do his civic duty and publicly testify to the crimes he witnessed.
Some Takeaways from the Book
Perhaps the reason Bolton like to blow things up is that his writing blows chunks.
Bolton has a very high opinion of Bolton and a low opinion of just about everyone else.
Mike Pompeo, William Barr, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, Nikki Haley, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Rick Perry, Wilbur Ross and a host of others need to be subpoenaed and required to testify about the crimes of Donald John tRump. If they refuse they should be held in contempt of country.
The book was marketed under false pretenses. All of the “new” revelations could have been released in a tweet without losing any detail.
Even in the age of tRump, chickenhawk neocon muttonheads are just as loathsome as they were the first and second times around.
Unless you enjoy reading a propagandist trying to sell you his particular brand of diplomacy at the end of a gun barrel, give this book a hard pass.
tRump is easily manipulable, highly gullible, and has the attention span of whatever gnats ridicule for having short attention spans. [I just summarized Bolton’s opinion of tRump in 20 words. Bolton used 500 pages and a lot of neocon psychobabble to distract us while he tried to make the same point. If you were planning to buy the book and I’ve managed to dissuade you, just send the money to me care of Vote For Joe]
That which came before:
Up the Resistance!
Memaliciousness
Cut and Paste Department. This is the regularly scheduled plea for readers. I’ve still only had to make two memes. You have it within your power to make me work. If you spread the word about Evening Shade and your spreadee announces themselves in the comments, you will become eligible to receive your very, very special noprize of a meme of your very own. All you have to do is jump up and get out there and start carnival barking, cajoling, proselytizing (or pimping, if you are of an irreligious bent). You could even pester and push. Procrastination is not an option — it’s a way of life.
It’s Saturday and that means Goodie herself brought us another original authentic GNR: Trump is as Stupid as he is Evil... and that is saying something: Saturday's good news