Oh no no no no no no no no no!!!! Just NO! The headline reads …
Trump Administration Sues to Try to Delay Publication of Bolton’s Book
Has the United States Department of Justice ever heard of the First Amendment? Have they heard of the Right to Free Speech? Have they heard the term “Freedom of the Press”??? William Barr is a @#$% son of a bitch, and Donald Trump is unspeakably worse!
The story, according to the New York Times …
The Trump administration sued the former national security adviser John R. Bolton on Tuesday to try to delay publication of his highly anticipated memoir about his time in the White House, saying the book contained classified information that would compromise national security if it became public.
The book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is set for release on June 23. Administration officials have repeatedly warned Mr. Bolton against publishing it.
Mr. Bolton made clear in a statement this week that his book contained explosive details about his time at the White House. He and Mr. Trump clashed on significant policy issues like Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, and in his book, Mr. Bolton also confirmed accusations at the heart of the Democratic impeachment case over the president’s dealings with Ukraine, according to details from his manuscript previously reported by The New York Times.
First, it is highly doubtful that John Bolton is stupid enough to include any “classified information that would compromise national security” in his book. And even if he did … remember that Donald Trump himself did that exact thing on numerous occasions:
- Trump discussed classified information provided by a U.S. ally regarding a planned Islamic State operation during an Oval Office meeting on May 10, 2017 with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, providing sufficient details that could be used by the Russians to deduce the identity of the ally and the manner in which it was collected.
- In an April 29, 2017, phone call, Trump told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. had positioned two nuclear submarines off the coast of North Korea. This was during a time when Trump was warning of a possible “major, major conflict” with North Korea. The locations of nuclear submarines are a closely guarded secret, even from the Navy command itself.
- On May 24, 2017, Britain strongly objected to the United States leaking to the press information about the Manchester Arena bombing, including the identity of the attacker and a picture of the bomb, before it had been publicly disclosed, jeopardizing the investigation. British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a public rebuke, and British police said they would stop passing information to U.S. counterparts.
- In July 2017, after a private meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit, Trump took the unusual step of confiscating and keeping his interpreter’s notes. This led U.S. intelligence officials to express concern that Trump “may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia.”
- On August 30, 2019, Trump tweeted a reportedly classified image of recent damage to an Iranian missile site that supposedly occurred as a result of an explosion during testing. Multiple concerns were raised regarding the public release of what appeared to be a surveillance photo with exceptionally high resolution, revealing highly classified U.S. surveillance capabilities.
I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I’m aware of. And frankly, the only thing that is likely to be ‘compromised’ by the release of this book is Donald Trump’s reputation, and that is already in the sewer. Every person in this nation is paying for this government … we have the right to know what the ‘leaders’ are doing!
John Bolton has written a book about his time in the Trump administration. According to the synopsis on Amazon …
What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes.
He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government.
“The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
The reality is that it’s doubtful Trump & Co can stop the book’s release on Tuesday, and even if they did … the cat is already out of the bag. On Sunday, ABC News will air an interview between Bolton and Martha Radditz that will provide wide insight into the book. And, enough has been leaked already, such as these key points listed in The Guardian:
- Trump pleaded with China to help win the 2020 election
- Trump suggested he was open to serving more than two terms
- Trump offered favors to dictators
- Trump praised Xi for China’s internment camps
- Trump defended Saudi Arabia to distract from a story about Ivanka
- Trump’s top staff mocked him behind his back
- Trump thought Finland was part of Russia
- Trump thought it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela
None of these should surprise us, given all that we’ve seen and heard over the past 3+ years, but nonetheless, these are not things we expect, or should have to tolerate, of the ‘leader’ of our nation.
Make no mistake … I don’t like John Bolton … he is a warmonger, which was precisely why Trump hired him. But, he worked within the Trump administration for a year-and-a-half, and I’m very interested in what he has to say. More importantly, we don’t ban books in this country … We the People have a right to read Mr. Bolton’s book, and read it we shall, one way or another.