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It's the Lacest this morning.
Former President Donald Trump expected to announce his pick for vice president at the rn C this week. Trump set to address the convention on Thursday, with his VP pick expected to be announced well before then. Joining us now after the tragic events at the weekend, I'm pleased to say is Ambassador John Bolton, a former national security advisor and former Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador John Bolden, thank you, sir for being with us once again. It's
good to catch up with you. So I want to lean on your experience. You've been to events with the former President Donald Trump. You've seen the degree of security this provided. How surprised were you that something like this could happen Saturday evening.
Well, it was obviously very surprising. You know, there's been a lot of commentary on what went wrong, what the mistakes were made. I think it was right for President Biden to say he's going to set up an independent review.
You know, none.
Of us are experts just because we watch it on television.
I've been a protect tee.
I still am for various reasons, but that doesn't make me an expert on peripheral control and things like that, So I think we're fortunate that Trump was only wounded. It's a tragedy that one of the spectators was killed. But we need to do the review of this in a calm way. I think do it quickly as well, because there are already conspiracy theories about what happened on
Saturday that I think are loony tunes. But I don't think they're going to go away until we have an independent objective review.
Ambassador, we're going to be starting the rn C. It's kicking off right after this assassination attempt. What kind of message do you think the former president is going to bring to the r and C because already in an interview with the Washington Examiner, he says he's rewriting his entire speech.
Well, he probably believed that when he said it. Whether it turns out to be true is anybody's guests. Certainly, the mood of the country, I think is such that it would be the right thing to do to try and calm partisan tempers down, and that's what he may well do. Would also be to his electoral advantage. I think he's the image of defiance that he gave when he was shot and what he said since then puts him in a very good position just to be coldly analytical about it, and it would be I think in
his interest to have a message of conciliation. Now, whether he's able to do that or I don't know, but if you focus the argument on what's best for Donald Trump, I think that is the answer that may be why he does.
You've said in the past you think the highest priority for his VP pick is absolute loyalty to him, the man, Donald Trump. Do you think following these events and the fact that you said, you know, in cold analysis, what's best for him is to talk about unity maybe you know the party in the country. Would it be to pick someone more towards the center.
Well, Trump doesn't have a philosophy. He doesn't really do policy, so for him, there is no left, right or center. There's only Donald Trump at the center of the universe. I think at this point it is still possible any of the names that have been mentioned can be picked. I don't think he's settled on a name a week ago. I don't think it's changed since Saturday. I think this is a constant matter reevaluation for him. Up until the
last minute. I always used to say that with Trump, nothing is final until it's final, and then maybe not even there.
Ambosador one of the historical correlate Larry's. A lot of people have used for this as nineteen eighty one, an attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan. His daughter wrote an op ed in The New York Times over the weekend saying that her father had believed that she'd been saved for God for a reason, and that was to end the
Cold War. This feeling of emboldenment of foreign policy. Do you think Trump will feel that same sense that he now has a mandate for certain policies that he wants to push through more forcefully should he end up being the president.
Well, I don't think we can say for sure.
I mean, it's obviously a shocking event to be at a political rally, to be shot at, to be wounded, to be in danger for some period of time, that it has to have an effect on anybody. But Trump has a remarkable gyroscope that although he has a short attention span for many things, he has a fixed attention span on himself. And I think that using this attempt on his life as a way of proving his martyrdom and the victim narrative that he has so successfully used politically,
I think he will use now. Whether that translates into specific action if he's elected, I think is harder to say. But will he use it politically to maximize his options once elected?
Absolutely that martyrdom, Ambassador Bolton, you're describing something that seems like it could fan the flames of division within this country. How concerned are you about that that this is a start of an era that's been bubbling back in the surface for so long that it brings it to a boiling point.
Now, look, we've had boiling points in this country, almost called the Civil War.
We're nowhere close to that rhetoric.
To the contrary, notwithstanding, I think Trump could cause a lot of damage if he's reelected.
I've been saying that for several years now.
I do not think he is an existential threat to our democracy, and I think it's in fact harmful to say that. That's the kind of rhetoric I think we could do without. I think Trump focuses on what he wants to do, not on grand historical themes, and I think his focus at the moment is very much on how to use the upcoming convention to maximize the chances he'll win in November.
I'm Bess Saday. You've questioned his fitness for office. You've clearly just joined histinction between doing that and questioning whether he is an extensional risk to democracy. I want to understand his potential to unite this party. You are a Republican, You've worked with Donald Trump, you worked with Bush, you worked in the rank and presidency as well. What would it take on Massada for Donald Trump to get you behind him and unite this party? Is that even possible?
No, because I do think Trump is not fit to be president. It's I don't wish ill to anybody, certainly not to the innocent spectators who were killed and gravely wounded, were to Donald Trump for what he was put through. But that episode doesn't change my fundamental view of him. Maybe he'll have a damascene conversion.
That's always possible. To redemption is a reality.
It can happen, but as of now, I don't see that that's going to change anything.
I do think this event, I mean, I'm just being cold blooded here.
This event will politically benefit Donald Trump, and we may look back at the eight the presidential debate and now the events of Saturday, and say this was the moment when Biden's campaign trajectory went into a nosedive from which it never escaped.
If you don't think he's fit to be president, is there a VP pick that would assuage your concerns?
No, because we might still get four years of Donald Trump. And I worry and I don't believe. I don't believe the facts have changed about the concern that personal loyalty to Trump, not loyalty to the country, not loyalty to the constitution, loyalty to a man who told Mike Pence to violate his oath of office on January the sixth, twenty twenty one. That will remain Trump's primary objective. So
we'll see who it is. But I worry that whoever that person turns out to be, they'll have given the wrong answer to that question.
Bassiday, you have a deep understanding of foreign policy and international security, a long, long amount of experience on those issues. Can we finish on that, Ambassador? How do you think the adversaries, the enemies of this country will be viewing the developments of the last couple of weeks, not just the last weekend, but for the issues the sitting president is facing as well. Ambassida, how are you thinking about that at the moment?
Well, divisions within the American body politic are are a tonic for foreign adversaries, and I think they're watching this whole process very closely.
They know that the United.
States has a fixed amount of bandwidth at any given time. We've got a war in Ukraine, We've got war in the Middle East, We've got a very divisive political season underway, and adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea are undoubtedly thinking themselves, are there things we can do right now
to take advantage of this disarray. They'll follow it through the campaign season, and I think that could be a very vulnerable time, not necessarily for the United States directly, but for friends and allies around the world.
Is there a part of the world you're more concerned, perhaps an area and you're more concerned than others.
Well, I think the one area that we don't have an actual conflict at the moment is the Indo Pacific periphery around China. We've been concerned about Taiwan, the South China Sea, China's.
Land borders with Vietnam India.
I think if you're looking for a place where a conflict could break out before November, it would be along that periphery.
Ambassador, I appreciate your time this morning. Hopefully we can do this again soon. Ambassador John Bolton Net on the future of this particular presidency, looking back to the lost presidency and talking about some of the issues on the horizon.