John Bolton said conservatives should be concerned if President Trump is elected to a second term.
The former national security adviser warned Trump lacks perspective on his push to increase the defense budget, claiming that the president’s motives are often simply focused on getting reelected. Without that political incentive, Bolton speculated Trump may have little inclination to adhere to a conservative playbook, and it’s unclear what he will do.
“There were successes, as, for example, when the Defense Department budget was significantly increased over wholly inadequate defense spending levels in the Obama administration. But not in anything in the president’s mind connected to what those resources were for, their deterrent capabilities, where we still needed improvements,” Bolton told ABC News’s Martha Raddatz in an interview that aired Sunday evening.
“He wanted to use those increases, which were important, simply to say, ‘I’ve boosted the defense budget. I don’t have to say anything else.’ That’s the political win for him,” Bolton added. “And I think the concern I have, speaking as a conservative Republican, is that once the election is over, if the president wins, the political constraint is gone. And because he has no philosophical grounding, there’s no telling what will happen in a second term.”
After Raddatz asked Bolton what he thought would happen if Trump won a second term, Bolton responded, “I don’t think you can tell. I couldn’t tell from day to day in the White House what was gonna happen, let alone what might happen over a four-year period where he only has to worry about his legacy, and he doesn’t have to worry about reelection.”
Bolton, a known foreign policy hawk who served as national security adviser for 17 months until September, acknowledged some decisions the Trump administration made were “consistent with broad mainstream Republican Party foreign policy.” But, he added, “there were many others that were just out of nowhere. And it’s the inconsistency and the back and forth that makes it hard to accomplish long-term American national interests.”
Bolton said he plans to vote for neither Trump nor Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Instead, he said he plans to write in the name of a conservative Republican. Either way, he stressed, conservatives don’t have a true competitor in this contest.
“The key point is that the 2020 election, if Trump wins, is not a victory for conservatism. If Trump loses, it’s not a defeat for conservatism,” he said.
Bolton’s interview with ABC is the first related to his new book, The Room Where it Happened, which details his experience working in the White House. It is set to go on sale next week.
