For three weeks, John Bolton had kept his counsel. After leaks from his manuscript sent shock waves through President Trump’s impeachment trial and reignited demands that witnesses be called to give evidence, the man who had so far declined to give testimony was about to speak.
“I’m so pleased that Duke has been able to do what neither the House nor the Senate was able,” said his host Peter Feaver, professor of political science, his words drowned out by a mix of groans, laughs, and applause from the capacity audience in the Duke University auditorium.
“Good luck,” Bolton replied. In two words, he signaled his intention to spend the next hour and a quarter deflecting, dodging, and ducking questions about his working relationship with Trump in general and impeachment in particular.
Still, he was taking no chances. His contract with Duke specified that the audience was not allowed to record his words. And after three minutes of mostly introductory remarks, television crews were given the prearranged signal to turn off their cameras, which had been operating without audio anyway.
Anyone who thought that might herald the start of a candid examination of Trump’s foreign policy process by his former national security adviser was swiftly disabused of the notion.
Instead, the audience got a familiar rundown of Bolton’s finest moments — America’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, the overturning of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism, and Washington pulling out of various nuclear treaties.
Feaver, the genial host, tried again, asking about Venezuela and whether Trump took a harder line than Bolton and was serious in his intention to replace Nicolas Maduro as president.
Wait for the book, came the answer from Bolton, who several times plugged his forthcoming memoir The Room Where It Happened, which is due to be published on March 17.
“Well, I’ll have to say … why we can’t talk about it … because you can talk about right now. This is a safe space,” said Feaver, to more laughter.
There was nothing he would like better, insisted Bolton, if it weren’t for the White House’s “prepublication review.”
“But we’re in the process now and may have something to say about it later, but for now, I’m going to let it go,” he said.
And so, it went on. Questions about Russia and Ukraine came and went without Bolton budging. No, he couldn’t comment on whether he thought Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect,” as the president claimed. “You’ll love chapter 14,” was his teasing reply.
Nor would he describe what it was like behind the scenes of Trump’s cringingly bad meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki two years ago. “I could read a chapter from my book here and give you the answer to that question,” he said.
But then, who would buy his book?
We didn’t even get to the question everyone wanted to know. Was the New York Times story accurate in claiming that Trump told his national security adviser that he wanted to continue withholding $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until its government helped with investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter? Is the episode recounted in his manuscript? And did he know how those details, undercutting a vital part of the president’s defense, came to be leaked at a crucial point of the Senate trial?
No questions and no answers. Instead, Bolton was happy to play the analyst rather than the White House insider, offering the sort of views that will no doubt eventually get him a post as a TV talking head.
And so, he was happy to criticize Trump’s foreign policy for not being hawkish enough.
On Iran: “Well, I think it’s failing because I don’t think it lives up to its bumper sticker slogan of maximum pressure. I don’t think we’re applying maximum pressure on Iran.”
And on North Korea: “It was perfectly evident it was going to fail.”
An audience that had come to hear about the Ukraine scandal was sent on its way after an extended tease of more to follow and a tour of Bolton’s (well-known) hawkish views on the world. The question now is whether his book will follow the same course.
