Putin struck me as totally in control, calm, self-confident, whatever Russia’s domestic and political challenges might have been. He was totally knowledgeable on Moscow’s national-security priorities. I was not looking forward to leaving him alone in a room with Trump.
John Bolton, The Room Where it Happened
I’m reading the book now and — Oh, boy! — all the stories that made the newspapers are in there. But more striking, at least to me, is the casual contempt of passages like the one above; even people philosophically aligned with Trump, and within his own administration, think that he’s a fool.
Today, of course, we have the news that Russia offered the Taliban a bounty for killing American soldiers, that Trump knew months ago — and that Trump did nothing.
The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said.
Putin has enjoyed an unhindered romp against the West during the Trump Administration — reason enough to get rid of Trump.