By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former White House national security adviser John Bolton has written a book that provides an insider account of President Donald Trump’s “inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process,” his publisher said on Friday.
Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is to be published on June 23 over the objections of the White House, which has been dickering with Bolton’s representatives over whether some parts of his account reveal classified information.
Bolton was fired by Trump last September amid simmering differences on a wide array of foreign policy challenges.
The publisher, Simon and Schuster, said in a news release that Bolton’s book details Trump’s dealings with China, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
“This is the book Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read,” the publisher said.
“What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting re-elected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation,” it added.
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” Bolton writes in the book, according to the publisher.
Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser for a total of 519 days. A meticulous notetaker, Bolton was in the room for a number of key foreign policy meetings.
Bolton argues that the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives should have expanded its impeachment probe against Trump last year to beyond questions over whether Trump invited foreign interference from Ukraine.
His book says “Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy – and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the administration to raise alarms about them,” the publisher said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Tom Brown)
