Now Who’s Weak on China? Bolton Paints Trump as Ignorant and Servile – By Kevin Baron (Defense One) / June 17 2020
The GOP’s reelection effort to deflect criticism on ‘Beijing Biden’ is destroyed by Trump’s former national security advisor.
“President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election” is the lead sentence of the Washington Post’s write-up of John Bolton’s new tell-all book about his time as the national security adviser.
It’s a helluva allegation and, frankly, would be a helluva first line in impeachment proceedings, had the Democrats not wrapped theirs up five months ago. Now, it should be the first line out of former Vice President Joe Biden’s mouth every day of the presidential election campaign until November.
Or, as some Republicans would have it: “Beijing Biden.” For months, the GOP has tried to paint the presumptive Democratic nominee as a Chinese lapdog, themselves as tough on Beijing, and Trump’s inconsistent and largely ineffective dealings with his counterpart as somehow beside the point. Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, blows right through that premise.
The president’s former national security advisor, long considered as tough on China, Russia, and Iran as any table-thumping far-right pundit could want, portrays Trump in his dealings with China’s President Xi as ignorant, unskilled, tactless, fawning, insensitive, and interested in only one thing: saving his own ass this November. For example, Bolton writes, Trump asked Xi to buy more American agricultural products to help himself look good at home and win reelection.
Small wonder that the Trump administration is trying desperately and with court action by the Justice Department to prevent the book’s scheduled release on June 23.
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