John Bolton Suggests Embarrassingly Simple 'Remedy' To Avoid Trump Leaving NATO
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Former national security adviser John Bolton revealed that distracting former President Donald Trump could prevent him from withdrawing from NATO should he win the election in November.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee declared in February that he’d “encourage” Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to other NATO members if they didn’t “pay their bills” in terms of defense spending.
Bolton, in an interview with the MeidasTouch Network, told co-founder Ben Meiselas that he believes getting out of NATO would be an early priority of a second Trump term, before offering a method to forestall to such a move.
“The remedy I would propose to anybody who doesn’t want us to withdraw from NATO is find a way to distract his attention,” Bolton said. “And since he has a short attention span, that can work at least for a while, until it pops back into his head.”
He added that it’s “unfortunately” one example of what a second Trump term would look like.
“A lot of things he talked about in the first term — maybe made some tentative steps toward but didn’t actually carry through on — we’ll see again in a second term,” said Bolton, who has warned that Trump might do “irreparable” damage to the country if he’s reelected.
Trump — who once called the military alliance “obsolete” — privately expressed interest in dropping out of NATO in 2018, according to The New York Times.
His NATO comment in February drew condemnation from President Joe Biden, who slammed his predecessor for “making it clear that he will abandon our NATO allies.”
“Donald Trump’s admission that he intends to give [Russian President Vladimir] Putin a greenlight for more war and violence, to continue his brutal assault against a free Ukraine, and to expand his aggression to the people of Poland and the Baltic States are appalling and dangerous,” Biden said in a statement.
Bolton, in a Politico interview in February, warned that leaving NATO would be “devastating” for national security, and said Trump has no idea about how alliance structures can be beneficial.
“He spent four years as president, he didn’t know anything about it when he entered the Oval Office, and he didn’t know anything about it when he left,” Bolton said. “So he has no idea the damage that withdrawing from NATO would do.”
“He may be the only figure in American politics who thinks that,” Bolton went on. “There are some nutcases around who don’t care, frankly, what the effect would be, but they’re a very distinct minority.”
