The Room Where It Happened, Chapters 10-11

Chapters 10 ("Thunder Out of China") and 11 ("Checking Into the Hanoi Hilton, Then Checking Out, and the Panmunjom Playtime")

Quick Hits: these chapters highlight Bolton's view (again) of Trump's foreign policy problems of personal relationships vs. the country, inconsistency and lack of resolve, and discord in the administration. We are presented with a cabinet that squabbles with itself while also trying to prevent the president from pursuing disastrous and uniformed decisions.

I will relate the information in these chapters by expansive commentary around some of the more interesting lines from Bolton's prose. Let's start with the headliner that basically every journalist put out to the raised eyebrows of the public:

[Trump] then stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China's economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump's exact words, but the government's prepublication review process has decided otherwise. (Bolton 310)

In negotiations with China, made more fraught with Trump's own "easily-winnable" trade war, Bolton keys in on the main obstacles to progress, namely the two-faced nature of Trump's position of acting tough and immediately backing down when it came to actual decisions vs. tweeting about them. This is exacerbated by Trump's lack of consistency in policy as a whole, in addition to his conflagration of national security with trade agreements, leading to confusion and disagreement between prominent administration officials (like Bolton, Mnuchin, Pompeo, etc.). Of course, that pales in comparison to what Bolton is alleging here, that the president directly asked a foreign government to influence a US election in his favor.

Bolton is also very upfront about his views on and criticism of the PRC; it is not surprising to the reader that he takes the hardline in this regard, from trade, intelligence, human rights, and, of course, COVID-19. He transitions into the American response to the pandemic, defending the work of the staffers of the NSC, quoting a New York Times report that they had indeed done their job and brought up ideas of stay at home orders and shutting down large cities as early as January:

...responding to the coronavirus, the NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty. (317)

Here, he lays the blame for the delayed response not on ineffective bureaucratic structures or lack of information, but rather at the feet of the person who has consistently declined to take responsibility for anything. 

[Secretary of State Pompeo] was willing to issue a statement, similar to one had had made months before, that Trump was deeply involved in the [security] briefings. I had not made such a statement before and was looking for exits from the hotel room so I wouldn't have to now. The Time article nearly severed an already tense relationship with the intelligence community. Trump called Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats "an idiot" and asked Pompeo and me in the elevator later, "Did we make a mistake with [CIA Director] Gina [Haspel]?" (324)

Speaking of intelligence, here is yet another look into the frustration within the IC with the president's frequent demeaning of their work in public and private, often in favor of puffing up traditional enemies. This naturally leads into...

North Korea had what it wanted from the United States and Trump had what he wanted personally. This showed the asymmetry of Trump's view of foreign affairs. He couldn't tell the difference between his personal interests and the country's interests. (348) 

Another common refrain from Bolton is that instead of working closely to improve stability in the region and to forge stronger ties with our allies (namely South Korea and Japan), Trump is interested in photo opportunities with a brutal communist dictator. While the president goes out of his way to praise Kim, he constantly wants to badger our allies (much like the earlier NATO debacles) about paying more to fund American bases on their soil, showing his ignorance of history and geopolitical situations in general, framing everything in terms of money (no doubt a completely foreseeable danger of having a self-centered "businessman" as president).