Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Situation Room” that President Donald Trump has been a “useful idiot” in his dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean Kim Jong-un.
Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked, “Lieutenant Colonel Vindman also told The Atlantic magazine President Trump is in his words, Vladimir Putin is a useful idiot. Do you agree with that characterization?”
Bolton said, “Well, that’s Vladimir Lennon’s phrase to describe capitalists that don’t understand what the communists are up to. In the same article, he used the phrase free chicken’s just chicken that comes to you. Trump is Putin’s free chicken. I think that’s a pretty good assessment, actually .”
He added, “My own view was that Trump just despised any indication that somehow Russia had influenced his election in 2016 because he felt it would delegitimize it. I thought that was the wrong way to approach it. Russia tried to intervene, the president should have stood up to it, but he was simply in denial of it because he thought it would undercut his current position. As far as him being a useful idiot in the communist sense, it is a statement that the person involved doesn’t fully understand the consequences of his actions, and I think that describes Donald Trump in many, many respects.”
Blitzer asked, “So, you agree with Vindman that President Trump is a Russian useful idiot?”
Bolton said, “Well, I think his behavior, almost across the board in international affairs, betrays lack of analysis, lack of consideration of the consequences of what he does, whether it is Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping of China or Kim Jong-un of North Korea.”
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