bohemians what you're last by rail. 30 minutes on d w. m d and business climate change brags that sex. happiness read books. for you. you'll get smarter for free if you double your books are you. i don't think you understood what he was doing you like talking to big guys you know the big guys get together and do big guy things but you did accept it for 17 months didn't you why so long the principal way you were moot the president is by the elections marred by. 4 months to go till the presidential elections in america donald trump is sinking in the polls and now his former national security adviser

says he isn't fit to be president anyway in a new book john bolton a long serving big beast of the republican party accuses mr trump of a litany of incompetence and obstruction of justice mr bolton is my guest this week from washington how much damage have trumped al bolton done to america and the rest of the world. john bolton welcome to conflict zone. i'll be with you thank you for having when you became donald trump's national security adviser you wrote that you thought you knew what you were getting yourself into it's not true why work for and give your loyalty to a man labeled as a serial liar. well i viewed the loyalty that i owed and that i tried to live up to to the constitution in the country you know we're not

a medieval society you don't have a legal order that you personal loyalty to it's not a mafia or something like that and the fact was in my view the country faced some serious challenges i think a number of the national security policies during the obama administration had been misguided there was a chance to make a contribution i certainly went in with my eyes open but i believed at least at that time that we could have a more regular process a more typical if you will republican administration and notwithstanding the risks i thought they were worth taking and the risks did they include the honesty and integrity of the president all the lack of it didn't matter to you. well it remains to be seen as far as i was concerned how much of this was campaign

rhetoric by the opposition i had had as i recount in the book a number of conversations with donald trump before the election during the transition in his 1st year in office we talked about all of my views on the key issues he had watched me on fox news for nearly 10 years i assumed he was listening to what i was saying i certainly wasn't shy about sharing my views and therefore when we talked about working together and. the role of the national security adviser. it struck me it was entirely possible that we could work together and the issues of his character would not adversely affect the decision making on national security issues but there was that just a general i eat i don't i don't think i was naive and i thought it could be as as many others did who came to work the administration that it could be made

successful now the book really is the story of whether that turned out to be true or not obstruction of justice is perhaps your most serious charge against trump you talked about several episodes where he expressed a willingness to hold criminal investigations to in effect give personal favors to dictate as he liked to the techies. even to xi jinping anyone else. well i think these these were the most obvious but. the whole concept of dealing for example with latimer putin as if the assertions of our intelligence services were the moral equivalent of what putin said on behalf of russia. was another aspect of it and i felt that this was

an extremely serious defect in trump's performance on the investigations of hawk bags c.t.e. weiwei and others i spoke with the counsel to the president spoke with the attorney general really it's their domain to take a look at and i say in the book that they were troubled but this is the this is the ukraine case that everybody is familiar with that there was a kind of last issue that i dealt with before i resigned it's become the most famous but my point really was it was only one in a series champs pocking you said looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life which you said we couldn't accept but you did accept it for 17 months than 2 why so low well you know a pattern by definition is something that doesn't emerge all at once. and the personal dilemma that anybody in

a senior position faces is the knowledge that you're not going to prevail on every issue i like to say i was the national security advisor not the national security situation maker in each of these cases as they came up i had conversations with others in the administration certainly didn't feel that i was alone and my view. of the seriousness of these issues but i think it's a very personal decision to try. and decide when finally you have to resign versus whether you can keep to keep doing what you're trying to do because of the issues presented you say you shared your concerns about this pattern of obstruction with key members of trumps in a team the attorney general bill barr secretary of state my pompei oh you say barr told you he was very worried about the appearances trump was creating just the

appearances is that all that worried him. well look at the reason i informed him and the white house counsel lonnie and others was because they're the ones responsible for enforcing the legal guidelines and boundaries. which they didn't do it or that i feel let me finish for a 2nd it's not my job to be the prosecutor it's my job to tell the people whose responsibility it is what i was saying and let them decide what to do the fact that i didn't know what they were doing a didn't surprise me and the fact is we don't know what yet may be going on you know it's very easy for somebody who's never been this kind of circumstance to just announce their moral purity and stand out and virtue signal my view is that that in in service to the country that that there are

a lot of factors to be taken into account and the the duty that one owes to the constitution faced with this kind of president isn't simply to make yourself feel good bye bye by issuing her virtuous pieties but really more by trying to get the right thing done so if you take the example of ukraine my focus was on getting the security assistance. to ukraine the trunk was holding up to get that the liver and. that finally succeeded as it turned out the day after i resigned but that is the focus i think that they had in my job it was my responsibility i told several members of the n.s.c. staff to speak to the lawyers to told them what we had seen and they did that

that for fill their responsibilities. and and i thought that was the proper course of the officials you alerted to trump's obstruction of justice what conclusion did you draw from their lack of any substantive reaction that trumpet successfully corrupted the government machine and made it life for him well i think it's. it's pretty evident that. the number of people in inside the government. who were willing to. challenge trump on a number of these issues has diminished over time now let me be clear the president holds the constitutional responsibility you can like that or not like that but the constitution is very clear and if you don't want to carry out an order the responsible thing to do is to resign and if others in the government are not carrying out their responsibilities that as a matter for them and their conscience and how they see their job what is it about

dictators and despots that term so it muddles did he ever tell you. no and i'm not a schrank i don't psychoanalyze people i think others others like to do that and god bless them if that's what they want to do i think that trump in a sense indeed this season pangs and the end of lattimer putin he liked talking to big guys you know the big guys get together and they do big guy things i think it was that simplistic i didn't see any evidence of. a relationship that would be improper or constitute undue influence i just think that was part of trump simple simplistic view of relations with foreign leaders especially authoritarian foreign leaders let's take the north korean leader kim jong il and you were present at 2 out of 3 meetings between trump and kim you said there were times when we were very close to making concessions that i think even prior administrations like the

clinton and obama administrations wouldn't have made was trump willing to give away the shop what kinds of concessions do you mean. well i don't think he understood what he was doing and i think he he he longed for a deal with north korea on the nuclear weapons program i don't think he studied the issue closely enough to know what the ramifications of different charms that were offered were i think ultimately in the case of the who noise some of the 2nd meeting where he did walk away from a proposal by north korea that i thought entirely inadequate he did so because he knew that if you were to accept that it would have produced a volcanic political reaction in america from the republican party in that he fundamentally couldn't do that and that really was the sort of reaction that

troubled me the most that he didn't approach north korea or much else on the basis of philosophy or grand strategy or policy it approached it on the basis of what was politically beneficial to him now look every democratic politician in whatever country takes politics into account in their decision making it goes with the territory it's not only not something to be surprised that it would be surprising if they didn't take politics into account the difference with tromp is qualitative it's the it's not just a factor in decision making on serious issues sometimes it seemed to me to be essentially the only factor he took into account a lot has been made of trump's supine attitude to the putin his own willingness to raise difficult issues like election interference is time scared of him. you know i don't think he's scared of him and and helsinki to be clear putin himself

said at the lunch. after the one on one meeting the 2 of them had that it was trump who had raised the election interference issue i think it's very important for people who observe. who have to make decisions on whether to vote for him or people who report on him to be accurate in their criticisms there's plenty to criticize. but when people stretch beyond what they need to do to make the criticism it doesn't strengthen the case against trump it weakens it it emboldens many of his supporters to say we're victims of a conspiracy by the press or whatever fake news hoaxes that sort of thing so when you have latimer putin saying that trump raised the election interference

issue at the helsinki summit i think that's worth taking into account if you want to criticize trump if you criticize me all you want i did but be accurate about. that though detailed records going to washington post no do you tell records from 5 of trump's meetings with putin since taking office and the least one occasion in the 2017 he asked for the interpreter's notes and ordered him to say nothing about the discussion which does indicate doesn't it that trump had something to hide from these discussions i don't know what it indicates i wasn't in the government in 2017 i can tell you in the case of the helsinki meeting n.s.c. staff did speak with their interpreter and got a pretty complete readout of what the 2 leaders discussed which turned out to be mostly on syria mostly putin talk and. you know i think that trump is very mistrustful. not only the bureaucracy as

a whole but but even his own staff i think it reflects the way he did business in the trump organization and i think one of his problems as president is that he still hasn't fully appreciated what it means to be president of the united states as opposed to the head of the trump organization how credible is trump's claim not to have been briefed about reports that the russians paid the taliban to kill american soldiers you were national security advisor in march last year when this information apparently surfaced. well there have been press reports not a fact then you know press reports are sometimes wrong and in any event i have said repeatedly i'm not going to comment on that because it doesn't. intelligence i can say with respect to the information reported about this issue and 2020 that it's surprising to me that it wasn't briefed to the president the administration itself has apparently said it was in the presidential daily brief

during my 17 months at the white house i never saw any evidence that the president read the p.t.b. and in terms of whether or not it was briefed to i've said and i think it's important for people understand that i agreed with susan rice who has written an op ed where she said if she were a national security advisor and that information had come to her attention she'd have gone in and to the oval office and told barack obama and i like to think i would have done the same do you buy the story which is being put out by your successor as national security advisor robert o'brien is that the president's career cia briefer decided not to brief him about this because it was under verified intelligence she made that call and i think she made the right call it was a system worked like that. well it didn't work like that when i was there nor did it work like that under my predecessor h.r.

mcmaster at least as i understand it. the issue when you only provide an oral briefing to the president twice a week is how much are you going to try and squeeze in a limited amount of time and that's usually discussed at a preliminary meeting right before going in to see the president with the director of national intelligence director and cia the griefer of the time and and myself you know it would be better if the president read the materials and studied them more carefully i think that that written materials tend to be a more efficient way to convey information certainly the president's always free to ask questions and that is to be encouraged but it's it's despite what some advisers to the president have said he does not consume as much intelligence as you should let's talk if we may about the 2800 murder of the saudi journalist jamal khashoggi

by saudi operatives in istanbul october the 15th that year trump decided to stand by the saudi leadership and even wrote their excuse for them suggesting it was a rogue operation but it wasn't a rogue operation was a. well you know i'm not going to get into the. intelligence that the united states had on that i can say that the president decided that he was going to stand by the saudis and. because of the importance of the relationship. that position i think was. it was in a way verified by vladimir putin in a conversation i had with him in moscow who said look you don't want to sell weapons to the saudis you don't have to i'd be happy to sell it is that whatever it comes down to who is going to be able to sell weapons to whom you gave a free pass to a government that brazenly chops up its political opponents in other people's

countries not just to the saudis but to every other state the u.s. does big business with that tortures and murders its own people doesn't that worry you. well you know is when certain churchill said if. if the devil were who opposed it off hitler he would have found it in his heart for a kind word to say on the floor of the house of commons you don't you don't always get to pick who your allies are. difficult unstable part of the world nobody in the administration condoned what happened you can show there's no question about it but we live in a harsh world. you live in a world where i wonder how many of the untold masses jailed for having opinions in saudi arabia and other despotic states that the us but friends would go along with your statement that the greatest hope for freedom of mankind is the u.s. if a country that can finesse missed the question is murder is the best hope for mankind's

freedom then god help me. well look you're entitled to your opinions and i'm glad and proud to be an american citizen there isn't any country in the world that is done more to protect human freedom in the united states period close quote. let's talk about iran if we may so many bad deals to kill you once wrote so little time the one that you really had in your sights over many years was the iran nuclear deal wasn't it and in forcible that you better go on its own in forcible you code it on very fireball and that acquits generation in scope but you wanted to kill that deal with nothing to put in its place over the objections of key members of israel's military and intelligence stuff who regard iran as that number one of many of them didn't see it your way to. well i think you have it wrong about israel i think support for the u.s. getting out of the iran nuclear deal in israel is overwhelming you may have noticed

some things are happening in iran there. centrifuge assembly plant at natanz apparently had a severe accident that they have not revealed fully there are other explosions going on around the country i don't know who's doing it but i'm glad somebody is doing it i don't know whether it's the precursor to taking down the entire nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program in iran but. it certainly is a step and in that direction the fact is i don't trust the ayatollah as in the regime i think they consistently withheld information from international inspectors they lied about the nature of the program for 20 plus years until they were caught time and time again in those lies i don't think they ever made a strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons and i think the u.s. decision to pull out of the deal. caught them by surprise and left them in a very difficult position it's

a hugely unpopular regime in iran and hopefully the day will come when the ayatollah as are swept into the dustbin of history. if we could just go back to ukraine you decided not to give testimony at the house impeachment hearing you didn't like the way the democrats handled the process you called it impeachment malpractise if you thought the president was abusing his power was it more important to get that out the worrying about procedural issues isn't it more important to get a result again you're back in the virtue signaling posturing mode of politics and that's just not the way i do things the democratic malpractise which is what it was left the situation worse than it was before the impeachment why because the way they conducted the impeachment in a very partisan fashion essentially guaranteed a partisan outcome and the outcome was that the senate acquitted trom so the

impeachment advocates said that by the house action of impeaching the president he would be deterred from engaging in the kind of conduct we saw in ukraine but they had no way of getting 2 thirds of the senate to vote to convict so having acquitted trog donnelly did not the church him they empowered him they were removed the impeachment guardrail is a huge mistake by publishing this book what i've done is to try and lay the facts out before the real judges not congress but the american people we have an election in 4 months the american people will speak i trust their judgment more than congress but the election isn't a substitute for the constitutional provisions for removing a president from office he'll go through all of this or does it all so you think elections are s. what do you think the lections are if they're not the principal constitutional path to doing just that and pietschmann has occurred 4 times in american history and no

president has ever been convicted only nixon resigned and what distinguishes. the watergate impeachment proceedings from the 3 that failed andrew johnson bill clinton and donald trump the democrats worked in watergate with republican sam ervin to north korea and north carolina worked with howard baker of tennessee and they produced a growing feeling. on a bipartisan basis that nixon had to go by ignoring that relatively recent precedent the democrats guaranteed the outcome we got that the and this this is a i think a very fundamental point about democratic theory the principle way you remove presidents is by elections not by. we're 4 months away from the next of those elections what is true blues is by

a small margin do you expect him to go quietly or organize some go of bizarre national emergency to try and stay way well maybe you would tell me what evidence you have that he's planning to to create a bizarre national emergency you know it's like oh i was in arizona didn't see that the vote will be the most corrupt election in the history of our country and we cannot let this happen so you're making the same mistake as many trying critics you're exaggerating without adequate evidence and i know your question and i know from your questions you obviously despise truck that's fine and i understand that but but the way you're approaching it makes it difficult for those of us who are opposed to him getting another term to make the case to americans who want to know what the facts are that that's something but you know the people will decide here in 4 months and we'll see what the outcome is before you get hyperthyroid about it let's see what happens jumbo then thanks very much for being conflicts i enjoyed

that. thanks.

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trencher land by rail. coming up on w. a week. during the corona pandemic. why not. the big paris fashion designers have gotten creative in the crisis. they're presenting their collections on lock. down. your room it's. been 30 years on d w. i'm not laughing at the germans well i guess sometimes i am but most end up in with the tampa bay but i don't think deep into jamma culture of. new jersey will take his

grandma down to you because it's all that who pay enough time rachel join me for me to get on the gulf coast are they friends so long to be with you should i see here or would you wish it was merely a full phantom of the free news new mission or are they and i mean he's going to do the finish if you see a live coverage feel pushed you will go with me because usually what he's going to be going to give me shit my damn work for i just donald trump on sunday we're putting our 2 parking entries analyzes the difficult relationship between russia and the u.s. and between their presidents how does their rivalry and their dangerous mutual admiration affect the rest of the world prism bullies trump and putin starts august 3rd on d w. we know that this is very time for the coronavirus is changing the world changing. so please take care of yourself good

distance wash your hands if you can stay at how we are doing we humans are here for you we are. working tirelessly that you will form don't overwhelm what we're all in this together run together make it. stay safe everybody. stay safe please stay safe. this is news and these are our top stories the u.n. security council has a veto to extend humanitarian aid deliveries into syria the proposal sees a single access point into the rebel held north russia and china abstained after vetoing an earlier resolution on wednesday. bosnia has been marking the

25th anniversary of the struggle is a massacre in which more than 8000 muslims were killed coming.