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The amateur fireworks bursting around the country may have trouble holding a candle to Tuesday night’s conflagrations on “Late Night,” as host Stephen Colbert grilled John Bolton over his tell-all book about his time as a member of the Trump administration.
The former national security adviser and author of Trump memoir “The Room Where It Happened” was on the hot seat on the CBS VIAC, -1.63% “Late Show,” notably about his decision to work with the Trump administration in the first place, as well as his decision to wait for a book deal to offer up a caustic rebuke of his former boss.
The book describes Trump as easily swayed by autocrats and often ridiculed by his own advisers, portraying the president as someone who placed his own political interests over foreign policy in trade dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The “Late Night” host opened the interview by asking Bolton if he was a man who characterized himself as thick-skinned.
“Because you’ve gotten a lot of criticism about waiting to tell us all this information in the book rather than speaking out earlier,” Colbert said. “Have you gotten used to that?”
“I think there are very important reasons why I didn’t do it, why I thought the impeachment effort led by the House of Rep. Democrats was badly guided, badly mistaken,” Bolton said about not speaking out earlier, adding that, “if you don’t have thick skin maybe you ought to think about another line of work.”
Colbert, who has been an outspoken Trump critic, then preceded to challenge Bolton’s decision to join the Trump team as a senior adviser: “You had to know that that was a whirlpool of chaos in there. Even those of us looking from the outside who never got to go in could see it. Why did you go in knowing how chaotic it was? Did you think that chaos was a ladder that you could climb and do the right thing?” Colbert asked.
“I certainly heard all the stories … and it was my belief that this could be overcome. That you could setup an orderly process to advance what I thought were policies that Trump felt comfortable with, policies that he had articulated in speeches during the campaign,” Bolton explained.
Related:Bolton calls Trump unfit for office, hopes he is ‘a one-term president’
Bolton also said that he believed that Trump wouldn’t be subject to the pressure of the left — unlike, he argued, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or former Vice President Joe Biden.
Colbert interrupted that remark with a chuckle, adding: “No, he’s going to be subject to the pressure of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. He’s a person willing to sell out the interests of the American people for his own reelection,” the talk show host said.
“What could be worse in Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden’s philosophy than betraying your country to a hostile foreign leader, sir?” Colbert continued.
The “Late Night” host also asked Bolton how he could have overlooked how “callow” he said the president can be. “He’s incredibly readable, that is why when he ran casinos, the house lost,” Colbert cracked.
Bolton countered that, “I couldn’t believe it was that bad.” And that triggered this response:
“ “But you’re an international negotiator. How could you be naive? You’ve dealt with the worst people in the world.” ”
That remark appeared to pierce Bolton’s thick skin, after all, who responded by saying, “You’ve really insulted me now by calling me naive.
“Look, I thought it was possible to work with somebody,” Bolton continued. “I thought surely they would want to learn about the complexities of arms control and negotiations and that sort of thing. And as I detail in the book, that turned out not to be true.”
Watch their back-and-forth here:
But while Bolton won’t be voting for Trump in November, he doesn’t plan to support Biden, either.
“I worry about them both,” he said. “This is a terrible election from my perspective.”
Bolton’s book release wasn’t without some friction. It wasn’t until Saturday that a federal judge said the former national security adviser could publish the narrative despite efforts by the Trump administration to block the release because of concerns that classified information could be exposed.
For his part, Trump has dismissed the book and has defended his handling of foreign policy. “He is a liar,” the 45th U.S. president told the Wall Street Journal, in an interview last week.
