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13/01/2026

The Trump administration as seen by John Bolton, a self-confessed Reaganite (3)

In late November, John Bolton, a Republican politician who served as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019, among many other positions, was interviewed by David Rennie, editor of The Economist. The following text is the third and the last part of an excerpt from that interview (John Bolton on American foreign policy), obtained through automatic voice recognition and therefore subject to errors, which includes parts that are most significant for drawing a portrait of Donald Trump's administration.

Continuation of (1) and (2)

John Bolton

So what that will do to Republican house and senate members is cause them to wonder how safe they are in their own districts. They've been worried about a Trump opponent in the primary. Now, a good number of them are going to start worrying. (…)

Maybe I should worry about the democratic opponent in November and that will accelerate. I hope the propensity to stand up and say what's good for the member to help them get re-elected that will not be necessarily what Trump wants so officials ever going to happen. I mean, Trump trump is not a normal president, not a normal person. (…)

He (Trump) is an aberration, and so he would have been out of the mould right through to the end. The real issue is whether in that circumstance, he doesn't spend more time on domestic policy or more time on building his ballroom, the drapes and carpets at the Kennedy Center, putting more gold filigree up in the White House. All of those things are possible, but Trump's erratic behaviour in international affairs has been demonstrated for 5 years. (…)

It won't change in the last 3 years. No matter what that's a danger that's not something anybody should take comfort and something to worry about until he leaves the office.

David Rennie

Help our viewers understand what this looks like. In 10 - 20 years time.

John Bolton

And he gets flexible, but it's going to take time the damage that he has done by talking about withdrawing American power and by acting in ways that I think are contrary to our best interests, by intimidating and causing our allies to back away from us, in the hope that the authoritarian states will make deals. That they'll adhere to is about as naive a foreign policy approach as I can imagine so I don't underestimate the difficulty of the task, but I think that that the reaction in the United States will be such that a lot of work will be undertaken fairly quickly and the worst thing that our foreign friends could do is assume that the US will behave like Trump forever. (…)

If that were the case, then I would expect a certain kind of behaviour, I don't expect that's going to be the case, and I think they need to think about that so when you have foreign leaders like chancellor merits of Germany. At near the beginning of the Trump term he said we need independence from the United States, I'd be careful about things like that. Because Trump in the 3 years he had left could say, well fine If the Europeans want to be independent, we're withdrawal with NATO, we don't want to impose ourselves on anyone think about what comes after Trump and calibrate the policies accordingly.

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