Donald Trump’s ex security advisor’s explosive tell-all book will reveal the US president’s arguments with European leaders.
John Bolton writes in a highly controversial memoir of his time in the White House that Trump accused the French President Emmanuel Macron of leaking their conversations.
It also details how he called the then-president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker ‘vicious’.
Writing in The Room Where It Happened – a book the US Justice Department has tried to stop being published – Bolton also describes how Trump threatened to pull out of Nato in 2018 and the panic that ensued.
Trump, at his first Nato summit in 2017, complained that too many allies were not meeting their 2014 commitment to spend two per cent of GDP for defence by 2024.
John Bolton (pictured) writes in a highly controversial memoir of his time in the White House that Trump accused the French President Emmanuel Macron of leaking their conversations
A new extract from the book serialised in The Telegraph details how he threatened that other European countries like Germany had to start paying the two per cent or the United States ‘was just going to do its own thing’.
Bolton writes that at the time Trump was ‘not following any international grand strategy or even a consistent trajectory’. He adds that this ‘left the rest of us to discern – or create – policy’.
Trump’s former National Security Adviser said that ‘it was not Trump’s directness but the veiled hostility to the alliance itself that unnerved other Nato members and his own advisers.’
In further clashes with Europe, Bolton claims Trump regarded the then-president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker as a ‘vicious man who hated the United States desperately’.
Writing in The Room Where It Happened – a book the US Justice Department has tried to stop being published – Bolton also describes how Trump threatened to pull out of Nato in 2018 and the panic that ensued
Bolton says Trump said Juncker sets the Nato budget, although he did not describe how that was accomplished.
Trump also stressed that he wanted to decrease rather than increase US Nato payments to the same level as Germany’s.
The extract goes on to describe one of the bilateral Nato meetings in July 2018 that Trump had with Angela Merkel.
During the meeting Trump accused Macron of always leaking their conversations, which Macron denied, ‘smiling broadly’, according to the book.
At the same summit Trump later asked why Nato hadn’t built a $500m bunker rather than the headquarters – which he called a ‘target’.
The book describes one of the bilateral Nato meetings in July 2018 that Trump had with Angela Merkel. During the meeting Trump accused Macron of always leaking their conversations, which Macron denied, ‘smiling broadly’, according to the book
It comes as a US judge denied yesterday a request by the Trump administration for an injunction to block publication of the book that alleges the president sought China’s help to win re-election.
‘While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy,’ U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in his ruling.
The administration had sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the publication of ‘The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,’ saying it contained classified information and threatened national security.
The book, scheduled to hit store shelves on Tuesday, is already in the hands of media organizations.
‘Defendant Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States. He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability,’ the judge wrote.
But he said an injunction would be too late to stem the harm. ‘With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe and many in newsrooms the damage is done,’ Lamberth said.
Lamberth also said Bolton had acted unilaterally by proceeding to publish without waiting for prepublication review by the government.
A civil suit is pending against Bolton that seeks to force him to give the United States the right to all of the profits from the book.
In further clashes with Europe, Bolton claims Trump regarded the then-president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker as a ‘vicious man who hated the United States desperately’
Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House to fly to a campaign rally in Oklahoma, Trump again charged that Bolton had released classified information and lauded the judge’s rebuke of Bolton as ‘a great ruling.’
‘The judge was very powerful in his statement on classified information and very powerful also on the fact that the country will get the money, any money he makes,’ Trump said. ‘Whatever he makes, he’s going to be giving back.’
In a later interview with Fox News Channel, Trump called what Bolton did ‘treasonous.’
‘He should go to jail for that for many, many years,’ he said.
Publishers Simon & Schuster and Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper welcomed the ruling. ‘We respectfully take issue, however, with the Court’s preliminary conclusion at this early stage of the case that Ambassador Bolton did not comply fully with his contractual prepublication obligation to the government,’ Cooper said in a statement.
Bolton’s book has drawn wide attention for its withering portrayal of Trump. Bolton describes Trump as imploring Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in winning his 2020 re-election bid, and details alleged improprieties not addressed in Trump’s impeachment trial.
Trump ousted Bolton, a foreign policy hawk, last September after 17 months as national security adviser.