OPINION:
Although John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is currently undergoing litigation in the United Staes, here in the United Kingdom we have been able to read it — and far from finding it to be the scandalous torpedoing of the Trump administration that liberals are hoping, I actually looked up from my copy with a favorable view of President Trump.
Mr. Bolton probably did not intend this. The book is clearly an insincere smear from an embittered ex-staffer determined to exact revenge against the boss who fired him. However, as hatchet jobs go it’s an incompetent one — with wild, undisciplined swings that miss their target — and often Mr. Trump comes out of a scenario looking far better than Mr. Bolton set out to depict.
A stand-out chapter is Mr. Bolton’s account of Mr. Trump’s refusal to bomb Iran. Mr. Bolton clearly intends for us to be quivering with outrage. He fulminates that it was “the most irrational thing that I have seen any president do.” However, Mr. Bolton has misjudged his audience and is clearly writing for the benefit of the pundit and talk-show circuit, not the people. For the rest of us who do not wallow in the Washington swamp, we admire Mr. Trump’s refusal to escalate a conflict in the absence of any U.S. deaths. Far from being angry at Mr. Trump, we admire him, as this is clear evidence of a president who is honestly upholding his election promises to not drag the U.S. into yet more wars.
My American friends need not fear Mr. Bolton. If his weak book is the most mud that the liberal establishment can sling at Donald Trump, the president will romp home to reelection victory in 2020 smelling of roses.
ROBERT FRAZER
Lancashire, United Kingdom
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