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Despite John Bolton's disdain, critics say Trump is a clear threat to democracy, given his admiration for dictators.
The former White House national security adviser during Donald Trump's presidency has said the former president "doesn't have the brains" to run a dictatorship, despite his admiration for such rulers.
In an interview with the conservative French newspaper Le Figaro, John Bolton was asked if Trump had tendencies that mirror dictators like those he has praised in the past. Bolton not only disparaged Trump's intellectual capacity, but also disparaged the former president's professional background, saying "he's just a property developer, for God's sake!"
Bolton, now a vocal critic of Trump, served as the former president's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.
Bolton's remarks to Le Figaro suggesting that Trump is not smart enough to be a dictator will almost certainly do little to assuage fears on the political left at home or abroad about a second Trump presidency.
After all, Trump has suggested that he plans to be a dictator, if only for the first day of his presidency if he were to reawaken.
Meanwhile, as he seeks a second term in the White House, incumbent Joe Biden has warned that Trump - the only remaining contender for the Republican nomination - and his allies are "determined to destroy American democracy". Trump recently gave the first signals by hosting Hungary's autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump, moreover, is known to have praised leaders considered at odds with US democratic ideals and foreign policy interests, including North Korea's Kim Jong-un and China's Xi Jinping.
Bolton, however, claimed that Trump, who is facing more than 80 pending criminal charges as well as millions of dollars in civil penalties, lacks the kind of coherent political philosophy that effective dictators require. He also said Trump doesn't like to "get involved in policy analysis or decision-making in the way we normally use those terms."
On Trump, Bolton added: “Everything is episodic, anecdotal, transactional. And it all depends on the question of how this will benefit Donald Trump.”
Such slurs from Bolton, who advocated for the Trump White House to pull out of a deal with Iran aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons, are not new. In a new foreword to his account of his work on the Trump presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton warns that Trump was limited in his concern for punishing his personal enemies and appeasing America's adversaries, Russia and China.
"Trump is unfit to be president," Bolton writes. And while he may not think Trump can usher in a dictatorship, Bolton has warned: "If his first four years were bad, his second four years will be worse."
Trump has apparently been biased in such predictions. He raised the alarm at a campaign rally in early March when, while reflecting on how foreign car manufacturing affects the US auto industry, he said: "If I'm not elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for everybody — it's going to least life. It will be a bloodbath for the country.”
His use of the word "bloodbath" recalled provocative language Trump has used in the past, including describing immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country."
He told a rally in New Hampshire last year that he wanted to "root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists and radical left thugs who live like parasites within the borders of our country who lie, steal and rig elections."
After that statement, Biden attacked Trump for his use of the "harmful" world, saying Trump's language "echoes the language you heard in Nazi Germany" as Adolf Hitler rose to power and orchestrated the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
In his interview with Le Figaro, Bolton said it was "very likely" that Trump would follow through on his threat to withdraw the US from the NATO military alliance if he is re-elected. In recent months, Trump has repeated his threat not to protect countries he believes do not pay enough to maintain the security alliance, and he claimed European members of the alliance "laugh at the stupidity" of the US.
"Trump, when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted, forgets, but eventually comes back and acts on it. This is why leaving NATO is a real possibility. A lot of people think it's just a negotiating tool, but I don't think so," Bolton warned.
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