Is John Bolton About to Be Fired?

Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

by Thomas Neuburger

It's been clear for while that John Bolton and Donald Trump are not on the same foreign policy page.

CNN, for example, recently reported that Trump announced publicly that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un had "kept his word" on nuclear and missile testing, "contradicting his own national security adviser, John Bolton, who just hours earlier had accused Pyongyang of failing to follow through on its commitments."

Earlier we saw reports like this one in The Week which said "Trump looks to avoid Iran war as Bolton reportedly pressures him otherwise." The same article also reported that as a result of administration "infighting," Trump has been "calling out to other advisers to complain about Bolton."

Most people in the world, including many in the U.S., want no part of a war with Iran or North Korea, but tales of these disagreements don't necessarily indicate he will be.

The following, however, looks more promising. Writing at Consortium News, CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou reports that according to his (unnamed) sources, Bolton is indeed on his way out:

I’m one of those people—not at all unique in Washington—who has contacts and friends all over the political spectrum, including in the Trump Administration. After work and over drinks, they like to vent. What they are telling me privately is what other Washington insiders are telling the conservative press. The White House, and especially the National Security Council, are in disarray. And Bolton will soon be fired.

...

Here’s what my friends are saying. Trump is concerned, like any president is near the end of his term, about his legacy. He said during the campaign that he wanted to be the president who pulled the country out of its two longest wars. He wanted to declare victory and bring the troops back from Afghanistan and Iraq. He hasn’t done that, largely at the insistence of Bolton. Here we are three years later and we’re still stuck in both of those countries.

Second, my friends say that Trump wants to end U.S. involvement in the Yemen war, but that Bolton has been insistent that the only way to guarantee the closeness of the U.S. relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is to keep providing those countries with weapons, aerial refueling planes, and intelligence support.

All of this has made Trump angry. ... Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff, has very quietly and discreetly begun informal meetings with a list of a half-dozen possible replacements for Bolton.

Though Kiriakou is certainly connected, this is yet another story based on secret sources, like so many others these days. Still, one can hope.