Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said Thursday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that President Donald Trump’s decisions were “random neuron flashes.”
Bolton said, “Trump has no philosophy, no national security strategy. He doesn’t do policy. He hired Waltz and many other people because he expected fealty from them. When Waltz exposed Trump to political liability because of the Signal group chat, that was all Trump needed. That was not sufficient fealty that that’s what the cause of the departure was.”
Cooper asked, “This is par for the course. I mean, this is exactly what you experienced, what you saw during the first administration in terms of how Trump makes decisions particularly with involving national security, foreign policy?”
Bolton replied, “Yeah, these are random neuron flashes. This is not Trump playing three-dimensional chess, as his advocates say; this is Trump playing regular chess, one move at a time and no further ahead than that.”
Cooper said, “Wow, that’s kind of terrifying.”
Bolton added, “Yeah, well I must say it was a struggle to try and keep the wheels of government moving in the Trump administration. That’s why I compared it to living inside a pinball machine rather than making coherent national security policy.”
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