Ex-Trump adviser says former president ‘hasn’t got the brains’ for dictatorship
Despite disparagement from John Bolton, critics maintain Trump is clear threat to democracy, given admiration for dictators
Edward Helmore
Sat 30 Mar 2024 22.42 CET
A former national security adviser in the Donald Trump White House has said that the ex-president “hasn’t got the brains” to helm a dictatorship, despite his admiration for such rulers.
In an interview with the conservative French outlet Le Figaro, John Bolton, 75, was asked whether Trump had tendencies that mirror dictators like the ones he has previously praised. Bolton not only disparaged Trump’s intellectual capacity, he also disparaged the former president’s professional background, exclaiming: “He’s a property developer, for God’s sake!”
Now a vocal critic of Trump, Bolton served as the former president’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton had previously served as US ambassador to the UN during George W Bush’s presidency, developing a reputation as a foreign policy hawk.
Bolton’s remarks to Le Figaro suggesting Trump is not smart enough to be a dictator will almost certainly do little to allay fears on the political left at home or abroad about a second Trump presidency.
After all, Trump has suggested he plans to be a dictator, if only for the first day of his presidency if he were re-elected.
Meanwhile, as seeks a second term in the White House, the incumbent Joe Biden has warned that Trump – the lone remaining contender for the Republican nomination – and his allies are “determined to destroy American democracy”. Trump recently provided fuel for that argument by hosting Hungary’s autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump, furthermore, is known to have lavished praise on leaders considered opposed to US democratic ideals and foreign policy interests, including North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and China’s Xi Jinping.
Bolton nonetheless claimed Trump – who is grappling with more than 80 pending criminal charges as well as multimillion-dollar civil penalties – lacks the kind of coherent political philosophy effective dictators require. He also said Trump does not like to “get involved in policy analysis or decision-making in the way we normally use those terms”.
For Trump, Bolton added: “Everything is episodic, anecdotal, transactional. And everything is contingent on the question of how this will benefit Donald Trump.”
Such disparagements from Bolton – who advocated for the Trump White House to withdraw from a deal with Iran aimed at dissuading it from developing nuclear weapons – are not new. In a new foreword to his account of his work for Trump’s presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton warns that Trump was limited to worrying about punishing his personal enemies and appeasing US adversaries Russia and China.
“Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton writes. And though he may not think Trump can foster a dictatorship, Bolton has warned: “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”
Trump has seemingly leaned into such predictions. He stoked alarm at a campaign rally earlier in March when – while musing about how foreign car production affects the US auto industry – he said: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ctatorship