President Trump on Thursday indicated that talk he is growing frustrated with national security adviser John Bolton is untrue, describing his famously hawkish aide as giving him “good advice.”
“John is very good. He has strong views on things but that’s okay,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
According to a Wednesday report, Trump has been complaining recently that Bolton wants to get him “into a war” and that aides misled him about the resilience of Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, against whom U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó attempted a failed military uprising last week.
“I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing, isn’t it? Nobody thought that,” Trump joked on Thursday. “I’m the one who tempers him, but that’s okay. I have different sides. I have John Bolton and I have other people who are a little more dovish than him, and ultimately I make the decision.”
[Related: Ex-aide says John Bolton ‘deep in his heart’ believes Trump ‘is a moron’]
He added: “I like John. I get very good advice from John.”
Trump in the past has made negative comments about advisers before dismissing them. In this case, Trump’s characterization of Bolton was entirely positive.
Although Trump ran for president as a skeptic of foreign military interventions, former White House aides say he is increasingly surrounded by advisers eager for military engagement in Venezuela and Iran.
“The only true counterweight to all of the hawkish interventionists in the administration is the commander in chief himself,” one former White House official told the Washington Examiner. “He’s surrounded himself with folks ten times more hawkish than he is himself.”
